At some point, one is tempted by the hype, and has to check out the latest train-wreck from the movie industry. In this case, it is Citizen Vigilante, a Deathwish-style “delayed justice” flick.
It features MeToo-deplatformed actor Armie Hammer, grandson of Communist industrialist Armand Hammer, who is returning with a bang to his acting career by starring in the most deliberately provocative movie of our time.
The plot — in case you live under a rock and have missed the hype — involves a vigilante who, upon seeing migrants commit rapes and get a slap on the wrist from the justice system, goes on a deliciously bloody rampage.
“First the traitors, then the invaders,” might be the plot summary here, because Hammer’s vigilante makes it clear that his ultimate target is the judges and police who allowed this to happen.
He clears out the migrants as a matter of course, restoring balance to the universe, and that kind of thing. His actual motivation is to purge the weak, in a film that is both incoherent and startlingly on point.
Its peaks, following Gatsby, of course, is a scene of chicken between cars. Hammer points out that most people would rather die while following the rules than turn the steering wheel, breaking a rule, and avoiding death.
It is a powerful metaphor for the West not just in terms of migrants and diversity but how people avoid conflict and follow rules in order to preserve their bourgeois middle class existence.
Evoking High Noon as well as Dirty Harry, the film points out how the desire for comfort and respectability has neutered Europeans to the point where they allow others to become victims and ignore the underlying problem.
Moving past the obviously controversial topic of migrant rape gangs and the political system that ignores them, the core of this movie is about Europeans, UKers and USians regaining a sense of self-preservation.
Much of it makes little sense to me, such as lengthy scenes of armored vehicles driving around, but a great deal aims to explore the psychology of the American of European descent who leaves a military career to restore order.
The scenes feel like a high school production in many cases, but then hit on great insights as characters are forced to choose between ends (justice) over means (civil rights) and find themselves becoming outsider counter-revolutionaries.
There are baffling moments designed to provoke, much as one finds in Houellebecq and Celine, such as the lengthy interaction between Hammer and a prostitute, after which point he gives practical advice regarding mold growth.
But in the end, the movie makes its point. In each of us dwells both the ends-over-means warrior and the means-over-ends suburbanite, and for the sake of our souls more than even practical concerns, now is the time of choosing.
