What is film without sparkling and occasional accompanying phenomena? Truth be told, the film became a general, recognizable item perhaps already in the first decade of its feature-length incarnation and therefore ceased to be a phenomenon, that is, the moment when viewership and earnings data became part of the film story. After that, only occasionally here and there does a film really become a case, and to such an extent that before weighing its kinesthetic range, it is necessary to present in detail the entire context in which it became just that - a case. At the same time, it is not a matter of a media-inflated (induced) case for a short-term and, therefore, easily perishable shock need. This summer we have (besides the staged uproar about the acting choices in Nolan's Odysseus) also brought an unadulterated case film, Citizen Vigilante, always by the mischievous German author Uwe Boll, an author who on several occasions said goodbye to filmmaking only to find himself in the limelight these weeks like never before.
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EAR PAIN AND NAZI TREASURE
Here, quite a bit of factual clarification of the context is needed in order to reach the height on which Bol's scriptural-director's achievements. Namely, Uwe Boll has been present for decades, he was recognized long ago as a tireless author of fast-paced, extremely genre-emphasized works, he creates under budgetary constraints, and at one time he managed to attract to his "flocks" more famous acting names (Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Ron Perlman, Burt Reynolds, Christian Slater, Steven Dorff, Ben Kingsley, Claire Forlani, Lily Sobieski, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Michel Rodríguez, Jürgen Prochnov...). However, from the very beginning, Bol was held by an almost guerilla heart and incomparable danger, and in the second part of his career, he dived just as passionately into the world of low-budget, practically spontaneous films from the margins of production. His films were characterized in the first place by extremist consistency, rapidity, blind faith in the power of the most exploited genre postulates and tropes, and then it is no wonder that in the experience of a certain number of film buffs, his opus fell into the section of the audience's burning needs marked by the phrase "sinful pleasure" (guilty pleasure). To that should be added the awkward, defiant, dusty and provocation-prone public personality of Uwe Boll, who did not shy away from conflict with the film establishment, and critics and other film connoisseurs were also on his target. And that's not all - Bol persistently stirred spirits by insisting on a funny-cryptic story according to which he, recording his DIY (Do it yourself) spectacles, actually launders money from secret Nazi treasures.
RIGHT-WING SOCIETY
It can be a compelling link to the rest of the story of Uwe Ball's new film; Namely, although this author has previously shown undisguised right-wing sentiment, in the new film he creates the epitome of a right-wing film from (wet) dreams. The story follows a rich American who, by his own choice, lives in an unnamed European city surrounded by invincibles and innovators, all of whom show anti-social tendencies, and everything culminates in revenge against a young migrant who was counter-reasonably acquitted in the case of the gang rape of a local girl, whereby the revenge includes all members of the rapist's family. The main actor until just a few years ago was a major Hollywood investment, Arnie Hammer, the descendant of a multimillionaire and actor of notable roles in films such as Call me by your name, Rebeka, Code U.N.C.L.E, The Lone Ranger, Social network, DŽ. Edgar... Hammer was expelled from Hollywood and mainstream studio films after his sexual transgressions became known, and he ended up at the bottom of the production vat insanely fast, where he was readily welcomed and "adopted" by Uve Boll. It is undoubtedly the main role, and if we follow the thread of thought about the supposed and always present autodramatic narcissism of actors and actresses, it is easy to understand why Hammer, without any other engagements anyway, accepted the offer. With an evidently very tight budget, the film was shot in Croatia and represents a significant production drop even for Bol himself, who was never, not even in his best days, associated with production opulence. Croatia is a very interesting and significant item here, not only because of the ideological thread (let's just remember, for example, how the border services treated migrants just a few years ago) but also because our western neighbor is asserting itself as a safe haven for disgraced and rejected (cancelled) Hollywood stars: if it is necessary to remind, the also overwrought Kevin Spacey found a piece of the proverbial (bitter) seven-crust bread precisely in Croatia - playing Franja Tuđman in a documentary-feature film by Jakov Sedlar, the most rigid, hardworking and persistent of all hyper-right directors, even on a global scale. Meanwhile, Hammer himself changed his mind - in a crazy and futile attempt at PR acrobatics, he distanced himself from the film and its crystal clear anti-immigrant and Islamophobic message, claiming that the script was given to him to read in small installments and fragments and that the story was obviously reshaped in the editing. His complaint came just a few weeks after the spectacular announcement by Uwe Boll, who was irritated by the decision of the German censorship bodies, which practically made it impossible to distribute the film. Citizen Vigilante in that country, offered the film for free viewing via the social network X (formerly Twitter). His decision was supported by Elon Musk himself, who quickly shared the link to the film with his 240 million followers on that network, which made Ball's film (which, let's also mention, went to VOD regularly and without problems in the USA (Video on Demand) offer, got the chance to become the most viewed film of the entire year.
Even extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing ideas (which are often complementary, which mirror and feed each other) are in principle acceptable personal choices of individuals, and it is up to organized society, as the example of Germany has shown, to regulate them, rein them in and try to introduce them into the system and keep them within it. However, Citizen Vigilante has clearly exposed all the weakness and porosity of such an approach to the light of day, while, naturally, the story about the qualitative scope of this obviously purposefully provocative film by Uwe Boll has disappeared from the spotlight. Although this (at least judging by the film search engine IMDB) is, for clear reasons and reasons, the best-rated film of Ball's, and that is based on the sample of his entire voluminous oeuvre to date, Citizen Vigilante, reduced to a focus on the finesse of quality, is easily perhaps Ball's worst film. Basically, it's a rather uninspired retelling and appropriation Death wishes Michael Winner and Exterminator James Glickenhouse, visibly superior works than Ball was able to offer. The film is rudimentary in every relevant aspect - story telling, rhythm (and tension), characterization, film language, editing and filming, as well as production, where it even evokes a strong memory of Serbian and regional films that were filmed electronically and shown at the turn of the century, without a single cinematic sequence. So, in that domain, it is a kinesthetically, if not null, at least completely negligible film, whose authors only have to offer a routine doctrine of shock and a not at all subtle and wiser provocation. And all this in the case of the film with which, in the media sense, Uve Bol finally strongly and completely entered the mainstream and before the eyes of a wider (not exclusively film) public.
In the fund of deliberately provocative films, this work by Ball, with so little of anything cinematic, fights for a place in the same context with John Waters, Russ Meyer, Ruggero Deodato, or more recent classics of that subgenre such as From behind, The evil lieutenant, Man bitten by dog..., to mention here only a few recognizable examples.
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