In Citizen Vigilante, Armie Hammer plays Sanders, a former US soldier who has inherited his father’s real estate empire in an unnamed European country. Angered by what he sees as a Muslim takeover of the continent, Sanders embarks on an extrajudicial killing spree of migrants, youths, and judges he views as complicit.
In the film, Hammer’s character is emboldened by watching videoclips from an Instagram-like social media platform showing people around the world praising his violent campaign against immigrants.
“Have you heard of this vigilante crime fighter guy over in Europe? He’s like the real deal. This man is taking out the trash,” one woman says in a clip from the movie, adding, “I think we need somebody over here in the States like that.”
Unsurprisingly, far-right extremists in the real world love it too.
In the weeks since the movie was released, white supremacists and other extremists have praised the movie’s message and claimed that it can act like a playbook to follow in real life. “Maybe violence against migrants is what is needed,” wrote one member of a far-right channel discussing the film. “It’s the only way. They have no remorse. They want you dead,” another wrote in response.
The movie repeats the baseless great replacement conspiracy theory that Muslim immigrants have overrun the entire continent, and it was widely panned by critics who called it “astonishingly bad” and “racist, xenophobic, ethnocentrist, alt-right agitprop.” It was released in June just weeks after anti-immigrant riots roiled the UK and Northern Ireland.
The film was directed by Uwe Boll, widely considered by critics to be one of the worst directors of all time. Perhaps best known for his panned adaptations of video games like Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne, Boll, who in the past boxed his critics and once challenged Michael Bay to face him in the ring, has also made movies about topics like the Holocaust and peacekeeping actions in Darfur. (The film about Darfur did, however, win best international film at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.)
Boll told Piers Morgan in an interview that he was not anti-Muslim, but in comments to Hollywood Elsewhere he said that Muslims “will take over in around 30 years and then will start killing everybody who is not a convert to Islam.”
Boll tells WIRED that he “meant or implied radical Islamistic muslims” in his comment to Hollywood Elsewhere, adding: “They believe in stone-age, hateful, anti-democratic, and violent rules. They hate gays, Jews, Christians, and our way of life in general.”
The movie was essentially banned in Boll’s home country of Germany for “inciting violence against immigrants,” and like many of Boll’s other works it was set to be mostly ignored, until Elon Musk, who has spent weeks endorsing it, intervened.
Musk shared the entire film on X for 48 hours where it was viewed millions of times. During his promotion spree, Musk shared a post suggesting a scene from the film in which Hammer’s character murders an entire family of Syrian refugees whose son was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl as “the moderate response.”
The film was also released through popular streaming services. At one point, it reached the top 10 trending list on Apple’s and Amazon’s on-demand streaming services. And because the film has yet to receive a cinematic release in some countries, some far-right groups have been holding live screenings of the film online.
“Equally disturbing to the racist violence depicted in this movie is the fact that anti-migrant ferocity has been normalized to the point that the film could even be made and distributed,” says Wendy Via, cofounder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “Influencers like Musk, with millions of followers, who use their platforms to spread bigotry and conspiracy theories, are a significant source of this unacceptable normalization of hate.”
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