The director of Armie Hammer’s controversial comeback vehicle Citizen Vigilante has insisted he’s “not a Nazi” after the film was banned in Germany.
The Call Me By Your Name actor was being touted as one of Hollywood’s hottest prospects when he was accused of rape, sexual misconduct and cannibalism in 2021. Hammer denied all allegations.
As well as proving controversial thanks to its lead star, Citizen Vigilante has faced criticism for its extreme violence and anti-immigrant messaging – with Germany banning the movie.
The film sees Hammer play Sanders, a man who takes matters into his own hands after becoming angry at violent crime perpetrated by immigrants.
Its director Uwe Boll has now defended the film and himself, insisting in an interview with The Telegraph: “I’m not a Nazi.”
He said: “Now you’re being told that if you’re a conservative about anything – social, sexual, political – that you’re a Nazi. But this is how things stand at the moment.
“If you question anything – such as the hundreds of billions being pumped into Ukraine – then you’re either a friend of Putin or a Nazi or both.”
When asked if he was a Nazi, Boll laughed “like a man who has been asked this question several times before”, The Telegraph writes.
Citizen Vigilante will be released in the States tomorrow (Friday 19 June) but does not have a UK distributor.
The director said of Germany’s decision: “The rating system refused to give us a rating, so now you can only watch it if you bring in a Blu-ray from Austria or Switzerland. And I think they did that on purpose.
“It was a deliberate censorship decision. I hired a lawyer to complain about it, but we lost in a six-two vote, as I was told that the film was inciting violence against migrants.”
He later explained: “In Europe at the moment, people are shying away from making this kind of harsh political movie, but I’ve always tried to smuggle politics into genre movies. This isn’t a documentary, it’s a thriller and I hope that viewers respond to it.”
The initial allegations against Hammer came from a young woman who also published messages she allegedly received from the star during a years-long affair behind his then-wife Elizabeth Chambers’ back.
Speaking at a virtual news conference in March 2021, the woman said Hammer raped her in April 2017. Hammer denied the allegations and his lawyer labelled them “outrageous”. The Los Angeles prosecutor said in 2023 that it would not be filing criminal charges.
Two other women also made allegations of emotional and physical abuse allegations, which Hammer denied. The accusations saw Hammer either dropped or step back from all ongoing projects. His agents and publicists also stopped working with him.
Having initially retreated to the Cayman Islands, where he had spent much of his childhood, the actor is now back in Hollywood and attempting to revive his career.
Hammer said earlier this week that Citizen Vigilante was the first acting job he had been offered in five years, telling The Hollywood Reporter he cried when the call came in.
“It was just this moment where I was like: I’m going to get to do the thing that I love more than anything — other than my children,” he said. “I would have done a f***ing cat food commercial. I just wanted to work again.”
Addressing his fall from grace, Hammer added: “I made these problems for myself. This didn’t happen to me by a fluke accident. I didn’t do what people are saying I did. But I brought very dangerous and unsafe people into my life, and I pissed off people in my life — and here we are.”
