Elon Musk posted Armie Hammer’s “Citizen Vigilante” to his X account on Friday, sharing the controversial indie-actioner with his 240 million followers. The link was active for about 48 hours and went dark on Saturday.
Directed and written by 60-year-old German filmmaker Uwe Boll, “Citizen Vigilante” was notably banned in his home country for depicting abhorrent violence and for being anti-migrant, according to The Telegraph. The film was released in the U.S. on June 19.
“Citizen Vigilante” follows Hammer as an American abroad in Europe on a blood-soaked mission to eliminate all criminal migrants. Other cast members include Costas Mandylor, Désirée Giorgetti, Steffen Mennekes, Neb Chupin and Mukit Abdul Hamid.
In Variety’s review of the film, critic Todd Gilchrist minced no words, writing, “Boll, a cinematic embarrassment since the early 2000s, here delivers a violent, incoherent, morally bankrupt slice of exploitation on the same qualitative level as ‘House of the Dead,’ ‘Alone in the Dark’ and ‘BloodRayne.’ In fact, the film is so astonishingly bad, it almost feels like the writer-director-producer is deliberately sabotaging his star Armie Hammer, whose intended comeback can only be harmed by this project.”
Hammer, who starred in films like “The Social Network,” “Call Me By Your Name” and “Sorry to Bother You,” saw his career come crashing down in 2021 after facing allegations of sexual assault. Hammer denied the allegations, and in 2023, prosecutors declined to file charges against him.
Boll took to X on Saturday to reveal that “Citizen Vigilante 2” will release in 2027. The day prior, Musk replied to a post on X showing “Citizen Vigilante” as the No. 2 movie on the Apple TV charts. He wrote, “’Citizen Vigilante 2’ will be even better.”
