There are films you watch, films you forget, and films that perfectly capture the moment. Uwe Boll’s "Citizen Vigilante" belongs firmly in the last category.
It’s provocative, violent, and unafraid to push the audience past their comfort zone. I watched it for free on Rumble and thoroughly enjoyed every chaotic minute — as did Elon Musk, who has been one of the film's most vocal cheerleaders. It’s exactly the kind of cinematic hand grenade a hyper-sanitized culture desperately needs.
Watching a criminal actually face consequences on screen acts as a primal pressure valve, venting a lifetime of stored-up civic frustration.
Boll has spent his career making films that divide audiences. Never one to chase Hollywood approval or fashionable opinion, the German has built his reputation on confronting subjects most directors would rather avoid. His films are designed to provoke rather than comfort, confronting audiences with uncomfortable questions about crime, power, justice, and human nature. With "Citizen Vigilante," he has delivered what may be his most explosive film yet.
Unsurprisingly, the film has already been effectively banned in Boll’s homeland. Regulators refused to give it a rating, terrified by how squarely it hits the nail on the head regarding the taboo subject of immigrant crime.
The story plays out like "Taken" on steroids. Armie Hammer stars as a relentless citizen vigilante — a protagonist for the right, an antagonist for the left — who decides that if the system won't protect people from brutal gangs, he will. He hunts down violent criminals, tackles rapists, and cleans house with zero remorse. For the uninitiated, there is a delicious irony in Hammer playing a ruthless meat-grinder of a hero, considering his Hollywood career was spectacularly derailed during #MeToo by the preposterous, headline-grabbing accusation that he was a literal, real-life cannibal.
But the sensational headlines surrounding its star shouldn't distract from what the film actually achieves. "Citizen Vigilante" taps into something many Americans and Europeans have been feeling for years: a growing belief that public safety has been abandoned while the institutions meant to preserve it are busy updating their LinkedIn profiles.
The average viewers aren't foaming-at-the-mouth psychopaths looking for bloodshed. They’re just exhausted taxpayers who enjoy seeing a little efficient, off-the-books urban renewal. They simply want the radical, avant-garde luxury of a competent government, functioning courts, and streets where a casual evening stroll doesn't require Kevlar.
Today, that modest expectation feels like pure wishful thinking.
Across much of Europe and parts of America, headlines dominate with depressing regularity: violent crime, repeat offenders, and overwhelmed police departments. Social media ensures that every shocking incident reaches millions before breakfast. Whether official crime statistics rise or fall matters less than the overwhelming public perception that governments have completely lost the plot. That perception is powerful, and ignoring it won't make it disappear.
When citizens watch career criminals coast through the justice system on a judicial subscription plan — while prosecutors decline charges and politicians offer nothing but thoughts, prayers, and early release — frustration ceases to be passive. Eventually, cynicism becomes the prevailing sentiment, and people begin to ask a rather important question: What happens when the people responsible for enforcing justice appear completely incapable of delivering it?
That question sits right at the heart of "Citizen Vigilante."
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Hammer’s character, Sanders, is no comic-book superhero in spandex. He's simply a man looking at a broken social contract, watching violent thugs thrive while victims suffer, and decides to roll up his sleeves and fix the sewage himself. You don't have to endorse his butcher-shop methods to appreciate the exact brand of exhaustion driving them.
The enduring appeal of vigilante cinema, from Clint Eastwood classics to "Death Wish," has never reflected a secret public desire for lawlessness. Rather, it exposes a deep craving for consequences, a desperate desire to see the cosmic ledger balanced when the authorities refuse to do it themselves. When official justice goes missing, fictional justice becomes deeply satisfying. Watching a criminal actually face consequences on screen acts as a primal pressure valve, venting a lifetime of stored-up civic frustration.
The film understands this dynamic remarkably well, but it also highlights a dark humor running beneath the entire premise. Governments spend fortunes producing nauseating public relations campaigns celebrating "community resilience" while struggling to deliver the rather unfashionable service of keeping parasitic scum off the streets.
Citizens are treated to endless speeches about values while wondering if they'll get stabbed on the subway ride home. Somewhere along the way, basic competence checked into a witness protection program.
No wonder the film has captured the cultural imagination. Viewers want to see what a world with accountability, no matter how brutal, actually looks like. Many in their 20s and 30s have never known a society where real consequences actually exist. I am one of those people.
"Citizen Vigilante" operates best not as a love letter to anarchy, but as an autopsy of our institutions. After all, the rogue actor only becomes a romantic figure when legitimate authority is revealed to be purely ornamental.
I don’t know what I clicked on that caused this, but lately most of the suggested videos on my YouTube sidebar are of morose and lonely young men saying things like:
Nobody wants to be in a relationship.
I’m 31, and I’ve never had a girlfriend.
It’s an easy formula. Speak in low tones. Sigh with profound weariness. Encourage men to feel sorry for themselves.
Everything about life sucks and is horrible.
I look at women, and I’m exhausted.
I prefer to live alone. In silence.
The sad-looking narrators of these videos are usually sitting in a dark room, or at a desk, or sometimes in their crappy car. There are no visible decorations, no posters on the wall. Maybe there’s a row of Russian novels in the back or the collected works of Nietzsche.
The young men are usually sitting far enough from the camera to make them look fragile, weak, broken, and alone.
Each man tells his tale of woe. He’s given up on dating. He doesn’t enjoy talking to girls.
He feels disenfranchised, unwanted. Society is against him. The whole world is holding him down.
If you click on enough of these videos, you will eventually end up on the women’s side of the debate, faced with a cascade of videos from equally disillusioned young women saying things like:
Why are guys refusing to date?
Since when do dudes not want to smash?
The death of boyfriend culture.
If you start clicking on those videos, you might end up with some mix of the two, which reveals that the feeling of doom is everywhere:
Something isn’t right with people anymore.
No wonder everyone is gay now.
She’s 29, and she’s so lost in life.
No thank you, ladies. I’m good.
Dating fatigue is setting in. Women are giving up.
My first thought was that all these videos look suspiciously similar. Is this some sort of psyop? Is some nefarious organization trying to undermine heterosexual attraction? Or destroy any hope for Gen Z’s marital happiness?
Meanwhile, I find myself stupefied by the infinite parade of Millennial and Gen Z guys and gals, depressed, lonely, talking into their phones in their empty rooms.
How many people are really like this? Probably a lot. And that’s not good news for anybody.
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It brings to mind the famous article “The Trouble with Wanting Men” from the New York Times, which declared, “Women are so fed up with dating men that the phenomenon even has a name: heterofatalism.”
(Since it’s the New York Times, nobody asked what the men think.)
Apparently, “heterofatalism” means that anyone who still feels trapped in heterosexual hell should kill themselves. Or at least feel very ashamed.
The writer of the piece, Jean Garnett, resents her own heterosexuality. Despite how objectively worthless men are, she still feels compelled to try to attract them. She craves that feeling of being longed for and desired.
She wants things to be like when she was younger. When men couldn’t resist her. When men couldn’t keep their hands off her.
Though from the sound of Ms. Garnett, I’m sure she would have something to say about any unwanted touching.
I have watched many of these videos. Men have their various complaints about women: Their girlboss attitude, their unrealistic standards, their doodle tattoos.
And women think men have lost their manliness. They seem withdrawn, passive, and preoccupied with their own troubles.
Women want men to approach them, charm them, buy them a drink.
But contemporary men are hiding in their basements, terrified of being #MeToo'd or rejected or ending up on social media as the butt of a small-penis joke.
If these videos aren’t some secret plot to make young people miserable, they are at least a way to make money on the internet.
These men, sitting in their cars, staring forlornly into the gray skies outside, are gathering large followings.
It’s an easy formula. Speak in low tones. Sigh with profound weariness. Encourage men to feel sorry for themselves.
There is at least some psychological relief in that. If it’s happening to everyone, it’s not really your fault. It’s society’s fault. It’s the times. It’s woke politics.
I do feel great sympathy for these young people coming up. It’s tough to be young and first venturing out into the world — especially at this particular moment in time, when everything about society seems structured to create conflict.
But I suspect they will find some form of happiness. It just isn’t going to be easy. And it might come in forms that are unfamiliar.
Either way, we should understand the challenges Gen Z seems destined to face. They are the ones with nothing to lose. Which means they’re the ones who will fight the coming battles.
We should remember that and help and support them in any way we can.
Hollywood director Brett Ratner was aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, making the trip to China on the Trump administration's dime.
Ratner, who helmed and produced recent first lady biopic "Melania," was spotted on the overseas flight by a member of the traveling press pool.
'Brett Ratner is traveling on Air Force One. Just spoke to him.'
According to New York Post reporter Emily Goodin, Ratner made the trip as part of a delegation including Elon Musk and outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook. In addition to his diplomatic duties, he also intended to scout locations for "Rush Hour 4," a sequel the president himself has taken pains to encourage.
- YouTube
According to Ratner's spokesperson, this will be the first time the director has filmed in China, and "Rush Hour 4" will start shooting in 2027.
Blaze News reported in November that President Trump had been urging Paramount founder David Ellison to bring back "raucous comedies" and classic action-style movies.
While Trump enthused over the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme's 1988 "Bloodsport," he also clamored for a fourth installment of the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker "Rush Hour" franchise. "Rush Hour 3" was released in 2007.
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Although Ratner had previously shopped around a new "Rush Hour" pic, his #MeToo era cancellation — after six women accused him of sexual misconduct in 2017 — allegedly made Paramount leery of working with him.
Once an A-list action director, Ratner's career has since cooled. "Melania" is his first film since producing true-crime thriller "Georgetown" in 2019.
The White House did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment regarding Ratner accompanying the delegation.
Other executives who made the trip reportedly included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, General Electric CEO Larry Culp, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.
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I’m looking at new apartments this week here in Portland, Oregon. It’s time for an upgrade.
This has triggered a debate I often have with myself: If I’m going to move, why not leave dysfunctional, far-left Portland altogether?
Had I become so comfortable with the bad vibes of Portland that I would stay here indefinitely, out of inertia or laziness or not wanting to start over?
This is my chance to move to a different city. Or another state. Somewhere with fewer drug addicts and criminals roaming the streets and fewer democratic socialists roaming city hall.
I grew up in Portland. I have lived here off and on throughout my life. During my most productive years as a writer, I lived in bigger, more media-oriented cities, mainly New York and Los Angeles.
But I’ve always loved coming back to Oregon and assumed I would settle here when I retire. Portland always felt like my place. I love the tall trees, the gentle rain, the misty Oregon coast.
Unfortunately, over the last 15 years, Portland has become a hotbed of radicalism and political intolerance. So much so that it has affected my daily life.
I’ve always socialized with creative types. But in Portland, the artistic community is often more hysterical than the violent protesters in the street.
Once it became known I was conservative, I lost about 80% of my writer friends. And maybe half of my other friends. This social exclusion was especially bad during the years around #MeToo, and then COVID, and of course the constant presence of Trump derangement syndrome.
The result is that living here has been like living on a desert island. I feel unwelcome at art events. I avoid literary parties and gallery openings.
One egregious example: I didn’t attend the celebration of life for one of my most important literary mentors, a beloved Portland poet who encouraged me as a young writer and helped advance my career.
I owed so much to this man, and I couldn’t go to his funeral!
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Recently, I saw a TikTok video by a woman whose family had moved from Seattle to Wyoming.
Her message was simple: “No matter how much you think you are aware of the bubble you live in, when you get out of these far-left cities, a whole new world opens up to you.”
This hit me hard. Had I become so comfortable with the bad vibes of Portland that I would stay here indefinitely, out of inertia or laziness or not wanting to start over?
One reason I’m reluctant to move to a red state is I’m not sure I would fit in.
Take for example, Boise, Idaho, the closest red city to Portland. I’ve visited there many times. It’s clean. There are no homeless. The people are super nice. It’s very “churchy” and family-oriented. There’s a large Mormon population.
But could I adapt to such a place? I’ve lived in liberal cities MY ENTIRE LIFE. I have never lived in a place like Boise. Would I find people who understand my sense of humor? People who like the obscure music I listen to? Or read the books I read?
Yes, the people of Boise would share my core values. But would they share my urban tastes?
I had a Republican friend here in Portland who moved to Florida during Trump’s first term. At the time, that seemed like a drastic change.
For a couple of years, I emailed him every few months to ask how he was doing. He had settled right in. Florida was great. He loved it there.
As he grew more comfortable in Florida, I grew less comfortable in Portland. Now, in 2026, moving to Florida 10 years ago seems like a genius move. I am humbled by his foresight.
So what should I do? Be the latecomer, arriving in Tampa or Austin or Nashville a decade after all the smart people already moved there?
I guess it’s never too late. I could still escape.
But what about the tall trees, the gentle rain, and the misty coastline I love so much? What about my roots in the place where I grew up?
Robert E. Lee didn’t abandon his home state of Virginia in the face of a civil war. But Virginia was famous for its proud history and strong cultural heritage.
I’m from Portland, famous for people with orange hair who don’t know what gender they are.
I’ve always assumed Portland’s current political extremism would fade over time. Sooner or later, people would calm down and return to some form of normalcy.
But whenever I try to connect with my former liberal friends, I quickly learn that the derangement is stronger than ever.
So, should I stay or should I go?
These are the decisions we have to make during these difficult times — as we struggle to maintain our sense of ourselves and of where we came from.
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