A disgraced actor, an inept German director and an erratic Cybertruck tycoon walk into a bar. After boozing it up, the cybercar magnate excitedly declares free shots of the liquor everyone’s been drinking — a poorly made, disgusting drink that makes you feel silly for consuming it after just one sip. All of the other patrons decline; there are better ways to spend this one precious life.
So goes the story of Elon Musk posting all 88 terrible minutes of German filmmaker Uwe Boll’s new film, “Citizen Vigilante” (try to guess what it’s about!), to X for 48 hours over the weekend. “This is what people want to see,” Musk said in a separate post. The film is supposedly Armie Hammer’s comeback vehicle after his swift and well-deserved cancellation, but it plays more like a setup to make the actor look even worse.
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Hammer plays the titular vigilante, advocating for violent self-defense against the non-white migrants terrorizing an unnamed European city. “Clinton, Biden, Trump, you never see them on the front lines of any battle,” Hammer says early in the film. Is it any surprise that Musk, of all people, is a fan of those sentiments?
Boll believes Germany “banned” the film by not assigning it an age rating, fearing it could incite violence, making it unfit for German theatrical release. But the only message of this racist, xenophobic dreck is that Hammer’s eviction from Hollywood was no major loss. If either he or Boll hoped Musk’s endorsement would boost the film’s profile, they’ll be sorely mistaken: Bot armies don’t pay to rent movies.
