By Robert Scucci
| Published 14 seconds ago

Most great satire is misunderstood at first because, more often than not, its subjects buy into it without the slightest hint of irony. I don’t have enough fingers on my hands to count how many people I grew up with posting Tyler Durden or Patrick Bateman quotes on their MySpace profiles to sound edgy and cool, not realizing these men aren’t supposed to be in on the joke; they are the joke. Similarly, Starship Troopers’ satire took a minute to catch up with the masses because the whole thing is supposed to be a scathing indictment of tyrannical governments, nationalism, imperialism, and military might.

I have friends who wanted to, and did, join the Army because they thought Starship Troopers was so cool. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of good satire is that it can be dangerous; the very behavior it’s holding under a magnifying glass to ridicule is often celebrated by people who refuse to read into the subtext.

Which brings us to Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante. It’s banned in parts of Europe, but can now be purchased on-demand in the United States, and it’s an interesting film to say the least. After watching it this past Friday, and thinking about it over the weekend, I can say with 1,000 percent confidence that the film is, without a doubt, a straight-faced satire.

The question that I’ve been asking myself, though, is whether it’s a good satire, or even an effective one, which is no easy question to answer. On one hand, if you read between the lines, everything about this movie is so over-the-top and hyperbolic that I’d be hard-pressed to find any movie lover who wouldn’t pick up on what it was trying to accomplish.

But we also need to consider that most casual viewers won’t be looking at Citizen Vigilante this closely, taking everything it says at face value, meaning that its messaging, as read off the page, is quite dangerous.

Uwe Boll, in my opinion, made a brilliant satire with 2007’s Postal, though I’m sure a lot of you will disagree with me here. Every single character is hateful and loathsome, acting in equally hateful and loathsome ways, and the comedy comes from thinking to yourself, “these jerks are acting like jerks, and then terrible things happen to them because of how they acted.” It’s juvenile, edgy in that eighth-grade gamer kind of way, and offends all sensibilities, but it gives its viewers an out. People can appreciate the satire, and move on without it rocking their world beyond its initial shock value.

Citizen Vigilante, on the other hand, is so deadly serious in its delivery that I could see why and how certain people who have certain extreme beliefs may celebrate everything the movie is trying to dismantle, which is inherently dangerous if left unchecked.

Why Is Citizen Vigilante A Satire?

Citizen Vigilante centers on Armie Hammer’s Michael Sanders, a U.S. citizen living in Europe who takes the law into his own hands without ever experiencing a sliver of doubt that he’s doing the right thing. His primary target is immigrants living in Europe illegally, who, in his mind and many others, are the cause of all of the continent’s violent crimes. Until migration policies are treated more seriously by the powers that be, Michael Sanders makes it known that he will continue to roam the streets, using extreme violence to take the law into his own hands to solve the “problem” once and for all.

Searching for the Citizen Vigilante’s true identity so he can apprehend him is Interpol Regional Chief Henry (Costas Mandylor). It’s worth noting that Henry would like to see reformation on the immigration front, but he’d prefer to do everything by the books. Henry is a man of nuance who recognizes there’s a crime problem, but also understands that better vetting processes can coexist with people legitimately seeking a better life through legal immigration.

Though there are some violent, epic showdowns between these two heavy hitters, here’s why Citizen Vigilante is most certainly a satire: Michael is a violent immigrant.

He’s a U.S. citizen who inherited his late father’s real estate business. When he makes his rounds to inspect his properties, he’s mostly concerned with their value and structural integrity so he can keep making money off of them. When his business partner, Owen (Steffen Mennekes), brings up his citizenship issues, and how some of his properties stand to be seized to be transformed into migrant housing because of them, Sanders refuses to budge, even if it’s exactly what the surrounding communities need to handle their immigration issues in a more peaceful way. 

In other words, Sanders is not a European citizen, and he’s benefiting greatly from Europe’s resources without consequence up to this point.

To make matters worse, some, probably several, of these properties are brothels. If Sanders’ entire goal is to protect women from being assaulted in the streets, which makes them feel unsafe when walking alone, then he lacks any semblance of self-awareness by not realizing that he’s part of the problem. Sure, money changes hands between consenting adults at these brothels, at least from what we’re shown. I have a hard time believing there’s no human trafficking or abuse happening behind closed doors, which makes Michael Sanders complicit in the same kind of societal degradation that he’s profiting from while allegedly fighting against it.

Need More Clues?

Michael Sanders has several workout montages in Citizen Vigilante. Michael Sanders speaks almost entirely in extremist clichés in Citizen Vigilante. Michael Sanders looks at all of the social media posts that praise his “heroic” actions in landscape mode, even though they were clearly filmed and optimized for vertical formats. The dude thinks he’s a chad, but he’s really just a chode.

Michael Sanders communicates through violence, traumatizing God knows how many people in the process, for the sake of what he considers to be justice. Meanwhile, Henry, who will stop at nothing to stop our protagonist from taking the law into his own hands, is the film’s representation of regular people who recognize that most societal issues are systemic, complex, and require biblical amounts of cooperation from all parties to leave the world a better place than it currently is.

The guy you’ve always been supposed to root for in Citizen Vigilante is Henry. The story is told through Michael Sanders’ perspective not because he’s the hero, but because it’s the behavior that Boll wants to hold under a microscope in the most extreme way imaginable.

Is Citizen Vigilante an effective satire? Absolutely. Is it well shot, well acted, and does it get its point across? Yes and no. Personally, I think the satire is clear because almost nobody acts like this. Everybody is a caricature in one way or another, and their decision-making across the board is catastrophic in every conceivable way. I walked away from this movie thinking, “Wow, that Michael Sanders guy is a real jerk,” which I think is exactly the intent of the film.

The problem with satires like Citizen Vigilante, Starship Troopers, Fight Club, American Psycho, and Falling Down is that plenty of viewers will accept them at face value, and that’s where the danger lies.

At the end of the day, I think Citizen Vigilante accomplished what it set out to do. The problem with art is that once it’s let out into the wild, it no longer belongs to the artist. Some people, who will enjoy this movie for all the wrong reasons, will celebrate it because Michael Sanders is what they think is a badass, personified version of their own extreme beliefs. Those willing to peel back its layers will find that the film is actually a blatant criticism of that very mindset.

All that said, is Citizen Vigilante a very good movie? Eh. Just watch Falling Down.

As of this writing, Citizen Vigilante is available on-demand through YouTube, Google Play Movies, Apple TV+, and Fandango at Home.