But then Elon Musk made Citizen Vigilante available to watch for free on his X (formerly Twitter) platform. Something that would avoid the censorious thought police and let the people see and decide on their own. Which only made the German and British governments even more furious.
Rush Limbaugh called it the "Streisand Effect": trying to keep people from watching a thing, makes people want to watch it even more. Suddenly I found myself curious enough to check out Citizen Vigilante. That's what I spent part of the afternoon yesterday doing.
What did I think?
It's a far shot from being award-worthy. There have been other films - I'm especially thinking of the original Death Wish - that deal with vigilantism much better than does Citizen Vigilante. There are some things about this movie that should have been left on the editing room floor (the brothel scene was especially cringe-worthy). The entire movie looks like it was shot on an iPhone with no color correction or other tweaking. I could tick off a few more things that are problematic with this movie...
But those things aside, I do believe that this is a film as relevant as any other during this particular time in modern history.
Citizen Vigilante is a movie that dares to acknowledge something that too many corrupt officials in all the wrong places would rather not have the people thinking about. Namely, how out-of-control immigration that allows any so-called "refugee" into the civilized countries of the western world. And with those "migrants", who refuse to assimilate into proper society, has come obscene levels of violent crime. Including rape and murder.
The officials in government don't dare touch the issue, they're that afraid of looking "racist" and "bigoted". A lot of judges have been letting the migrant defendants - whenever they can be brought to court - off with easy sentences. Their rationale: that migrant youth "don't know any better" and are even simply "misbehaving".
Meanwhile the actual citizens of those countries must live with two-tier law enforcement that places migrants above them. To raise the issue and dare challenge it is to invite condemnation from the government. Indeed, it's now a punishable offense in England to post criticisms of the migrants on the Internet. Do so and you're going to get the constables banging on your door to take you down to the hoosegow. The real citizens are treated much more harshly than the illegal aliens. Everybody knows it's happening.
Citizen Vigilante in inspired by that radical disparity across Europe between law for citizens and "law" for migrants. It's a very rough movie but there is no doubting the central message: that increasingly people are having to fend for themselves because the government refuses to help them. If there is a breakdown of the law and the duly-appointed officers cannot or will not intervene, then it becomes the duty of the people to address it themselves. And that is what Armie Hammer's character Michael Sanders does. He's taking out the bad guys, including the judges who are much too lenient, in order to drive the people into taking charge on their own.
This is a very, very brusque film. Not a spectacular film, and it won't win any prestigious awards. But it will get people talking. If they cannot readily see it because of their "democratic" governments refusing them access to it, they're going to want to watch it. I suspect that there might be a thriving underground commerce for Citizen Vigilante across Europe (is The Pirate Bay website still functioning?). It's going to make a lot of people think... and be moved to act. I doubt - and I really do want to doubt - that this movie is going to entice sane people into doing some of the things that Sanders does in his war against out of control migrants who refuse to like civilized folks. But it will anger them enough to take the bull by the horns and bring their governments back under their control.
My advice: go watch Citizen Vigilante, however it is that you can find it. Don't expect a pretty and easily palatable story. But you will find a very timely one.
EDIT 03:16 AM EST: I just checked and The Pirate Bay Is indeed still online. And yes, Citizen Vigilante can be found there. Disclaimer: I don't advise piracy of anything in any form. But if governments like the British and German ones continue to try to keep this movie from being seen by their own people, I'm almost tempted to say that downloading and distributing this movie might be a moral and ethical thing to do after all.
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