The Films of 2026: Citizen Vigilante (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Citizen Vigilante, Armie Hammer returns to the screen as Sanders, a former American military operative who is now living in an unnamed European country. The people in the country are terrified because the country has been flooded with violent refugees and the liberal judges and the ineffective police and the corrupt government can’t or won’t keep anyone safe. Sanders makes it his mission to mete out justice.

When he sees a group of arrogant young people refusing to pay to ride the bus, he pays for their ticket and then shows their leader that he has a gun. He explains how one person refusing to pay leads to everyone else having to pay more.

When he visits with a prostitute, he is disgusted to see that the building she works in has mold. Sanders is especially upset because his company owns the building. Sanders say that people have to start doing the right thing. Then he pays a woman for sex.

When a judge allows a group of rapists to go free because they’re struggling to “integrate into society,” Sanders drugs the judge and slits his wrists.

Sanders goes to the office of his father’s company and orders the any of his tenants who aren’t paying their rent should be immediately evicted. It’s explained that the government won’t allow Sanders to immediately evict anyone. In fact, the government wants Sanders to hand over his open units so that they can be used to house migrants. Sanders says that he’ll talk to the tenants himself. Uh-oh.

When the cops come looking for Sanders, he blows them up.

Sanders kills an innocent motorist in order to make a point about how people are scared to break the law. Wait, what? This is our hero?

Sanders kills a lot of people. He’s the Citizen Vigilante. He sends out distorted videos of himself in which he rambles about Nietzsche and justice. The fact that he sends out visually distorted videos would seem to suggest that he’s trying to hide his identity but he also spends almost the entire film wearing the exact same outfit and making no attempt to disguise his appearance while out in public. Interpol is determined to catch him but the average citizen, the people being victimized by “woke liberalism” (to quote Sanders), love him.

Lord help us. It’s 2026 and otherwise reasonable people are currently debating the merits of a Uwe Boll film. For all the talk about how this film is politically incorrect and right-wing, it’s really not that much different from Boll’s Assault on Wall Street. Both Assault on Wall Street and Citizen Vigilante are crude, heavy-handed films that capture the fantasies of people who currently feel powerless. Assault on Wall Street was designed to appeal to the Resistance morons, the same people who would later insist that Luigi Mangione’s vapid manifesto was a call for revolution. Citizen Vigilante is designed to appeal to the most simple-minded of the populists. Running through both Citizen Vigilante and Assault on Wall Street is a contempt for anything that reeks of “the system.” Both films are fueled less by politics and more by paranoia. Germany made the mistake of banning Citizen Vigilante, which just added more fuel to a fire that would have otherwise burned itself out.

Citizen Vigilante opens with a scene of shocking violence. It’s one of the more effective moments in the film, largely because it captures the randomness of modern crime. It’s also one of the few scenes not to feature Armie Hammer. One can make the argument that Armie Hammer was treated unfairly when he was canceled. (I mean, there are people out there who still think that Hammer is a cannibal!) Before his career collapsed, Hammer was a busy actor. His piercing eyes and his deep voice made him ideal for both heroes and villains. Citizen Vigilante has been touted as Hammer’s comeback, or at least it was until it was actually released. Hammer wanders through the film in almost zombie-like trance, refusing to show a hint of emotion. Every time he speaks, the deepness of his voice only reminds of how shallow the character (and the film) really is. The film works best when its lead character and actor are nowhere to be seen.

Citizen Vigilante is crude. Is it effective? Occasionally. Like most revenge films, it gets at the type of primal thoughts that a lot of people pretend not to have. That said, Uwe Boll is not a good director. Uwe Boll is an interesting media presence. I respect the fact that, when he challenged his critics to a boxing match, he actually followed through and knocked most of them out. I imagine there are many directors who are envious of that. But, as a filmmaker, Boll has never shown much skill or concern when its come to concepts like pacing, continuity, or getting the best out of his actors. Citizen Vigilante is a slow film that’s built around a character who registers as a big blank. It’s neither as dangerous nor as revolutionary as you may have heard. In the end, it’s just another film about people getting shot, blown up, and stabbed. I imagine that some scenes will achieve a second life on YouTube. That’s just the way of the world nowadays. But the film itself will be forgotten in a few months.

Wow. I just watched and reviewed a Uwe Boll film. I should get hazard pay.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Assault on Wall Street (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Assault on Wall Street tells the story of Jim Braxford (Dominic Purcell), a security guard who loses all of his money due to some bad investments that he had no control over and whose wife, Rosie (Erin Karpluk), kills herself rather than continue her expensive medical treatments. Jim snaps and, after listening to a bunch of angry people on MSNBC, he decides to take violent vengeance on Wall Street, targeting brokers and CEOs and ultimately launching an all-out assault on a firm owned by the cartoonishly evil Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard).

Full of anti-capitalist rhetoric and heavy-handed plot developments, Assault on Wall Street finds director Uwe Boll in a political mood. Because the film deals with economic anxiety to which everyone can relate, this film is slightly more effective than Boll’s usual films but that still doesn’t mean that it’s particularly good. It’s one of those films that takes forever to get where it’s going and the film also suffers due to Boll’s confounding decision to cast Dominic Purcell in the lead role. The blank-eyed, flat-voice Purcell gives such a spectacularly dull performance that one wonders if he was constructed out of charisma anti-matter. It doesn’t help that Purcell’s three best friends are played Edward Furlong, Michael Pare, and Keith David, all of whom come across like they would have been a better pick for the lead role.

The film ends with a spate of violence that I remember that I found to be a bit shocking when I first saw the film on cable in 2013. Of course, today, such violence has been normalized and is often celebrated on social media. I imagine that members of the creepy Luigi death cult would probably claim that Jim Braxford didn’t go far enough in his murder spree.

Two of my favorites, Eric Roberts and Lochlyn Munro, have supporting roles in this film. Munro is Jim’s broker, who makes the mistake of complaining about how he had to cancel his planned vacation to Barbados as a result of the economic meltdown. Roberts plays the lawyer who agrees to help Jim get justice but who ultimately proves to be no help at all. Both of them are memorable in their small roles, which once again leaves us to wonder why, with all the talent available, Uwe Boll apparently decided to make Dominic Purcell his muse. That was a bad investment.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

BloodRayne (2005, directed by Uwe Boll)

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

In 18th century Romania, Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a vampire/human hybrid who is being forced to work in a freakshow by Leonid (Meat Loaf). After Rayne escapes, she meets a fortune teller (Geraldine Chaplin) who informs her that her father is the feared king of the vampires, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), and that he raped her mother. Rayne teams up with a group of vampire hunters (Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen) and sets out to destroy her father once and for all.

BloodRayne is perhaps not the worst film ever made about a vampire/human hybrid in Romania but it’s also nowhere near the best. Instead, it’s another one of Uwe Boll’s cheap-looking video game adaptations where a group of talented actors slum it as action stars. (Michael Pare, Udo Kier, and Billy Zane also appear in the movie.) The movie is full of bad wigs and big swords. Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez are neither convincing as Russians or people who lived in the 18th Century. Geraldine Chaplin tries to keep things interesting, Ben Kingsley doesn’t. Kristanna Loken is actually a good choice for Rayne, in that she’s hot and she’s convincing in the action scenes. This is an easy film to laugh at but it features enough blood and nudity to keep its target audience happy. Don’t try to follow the plot, though. You’ll get a headache.

While we were watching the movie last night, Lisa suggested that Ben Kingsley was using his Gandhi Oscar as a stake. Now that would have been something worth seeing!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: House of The Dead (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on October 8, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You know things are going to be bad when the 2003 video game adaptation House of the Dead opens with a lengthy narration in which we’re told exactly who is going to die in the film and who is going to live. Narration is usually a bad sign, in general. Narration that gives away a huge chunk of the plot during the opening five minutes is even worse.

Things get worse when we’re told that a bunch of college students need to find a boat so that they can attend the “rave of the century,” which is being held on an isolated island. (The island, by the way, is known as the Island of the Dead but no one seems to be that concerned by the name.) From what we see of the greatest rave of all time, it apparently involves one stage, two speakers, and exactly 8 people dancing. The dancers are often shot in slow motion, which I guess is meant to make them look like they’re having more fun than they actually are. Myself, I’m wondering why anyone would hold the “rave of the century” on an island that no one can find. According to the banner above the stage, the whole thing is being sponsored by Sega, the company behind the House of the Dead video game that gave this movie its name.

Things quickly go downhill once the zombies show up and start killing everyone. It doesn’t take long for most of the disposable characters to get killed. The majority of the film is made up of people either running through the forest or hiding in a house or a boat. Because none of the characters really have any personality, you’re never quite sure who anyone is. Their deaths don’t really register because it never seems as if they were living to begin with. Watching the film, it’s hard not to feel that everyone on the island is a member of the living dead. It’s just that some of them haven’t realized it yet.

As mentioned above, House of the Dead is based on a video game and, frequently, the action is punctuated with heavily pixelated scenes that have been lifted straight from the game. On the one hand, you have to admire the film for being honest about what it is. On the other hand, you have to regret that the film itself is never as much fun as the game probably is.

House of the Dead was one of several video game adaptations that German director Uwe Boll was responsible for in the early aughts. Up until he retired from the film industry, it was regularly argued by online film critics that Boll was the world’s worst director. Boll responded to the criticism by challenging his most vehement critics to a boxing match. A few of the critics accepted the challenge and Boll actually did fight them, knocking all of them out. I imagine that’s probably every filmmaker’s secret fantasy.

Myself, I will say that I don’t think Boll is the worst director in the world. He’s not particularly good but there are worst directors out there. That said, House of the Dead is pretty bad. The dialogue is leaden, the characters are bland, and even the intentional attempts at humor fall flat. Seventeen years after it was first released, it still pretty much represents the nadir of video game adaptations.

Anyway, the main lesson of this film is …. well, I don’t think there really is a lesson to be found, other than that it might be a good idea to take names seriously. I mean, Island of the Dead? Can anyone really be surprised that the zombies showed up?

Here’s The Trailer For F–k You All: The Uwe Boll Story

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Somewhere on this site, I once posted my opinion that Uwe Boll was the worst director of all time.

That, of course, was many years ago and I posted that before watching Ulli Lommel’s Zodiac movie. At the time that I posted that, Boll was mostly known for directing movies that were based on a video games. A little bit later, Boll would get political and direct films like Assault of Wall Street and that led to some critics saying that perhaps Boll wasn’t as bad as they thought he was.

Myself, I stand by my original claim. Uwe Boll was the worst director of all time. I say was because he’s apparently retired from filmmaking. Before he retired — and this is actually really neat — he challenged some of his fiercest internet detractors to a boxing match. Many of them accepted, not realizing that Boll was an accomplished boxer before he became a director. Say what you will about Boll’s films but I imagine that, by literally beating the crap out of some of his critics, he got to live every director’s dream.

Anyway, there’s a documentary coming out about Uwe Boll. It’s called Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story. I may or I may not see it. Here’s the trailer!