Citizen Vigilante (2026)

Somewhere in Europe, a mother shopped with her son.  As they left the store and walked toward home, a black man with a knife stabbed the mother in the neck.  She bled out on the ground.  Michael Sanders (Armie Hammer) was an American who had come to Europe upon his father's death.  He found the situation intolerable and was only too happy to explain how things should be.  Though he owned rental property, he refused to let the government use any units to house immigrants.  He lectured a trio of rowdy youths about proper behavior, warning them to clean up their act; the next time he met them, there was no warning.  Judges who released criminals became his targets.  Then there were the criminals themselves; he was not forgiving.  Much of the populace celebrate his vigilantism and he is regularly discussed by the evening news.  Chief Henry (Costas Mandylor) was determined to end his reign of justice.

As a Uwe Boll film, it is badly made.  The same scene will be filmed from three angles and he will use the complete footage.  For example, the cop approached the door and set an explosive charge on the lock.  Different angle, the cop approached the door and set a charge on the lock.  Third angle, the cop approached the door and set a charge.  At another point, several police are mowed down in automatic gunfire.  It looked like 2 dozen men were killed but there were about 8 bodies on the floor when the action ended.  Yes, different angles again.  Then there is the non-linear filming.  At another scene, the police are carrying out bodies from an apartment building.  What is this about?  It is the site of Sander's massacre of a Muslim family, which proved to be the finale of the movie.  Boll must be trying to ape Pulp Fiction.

The news reports are astonishingly wooden, as if the female newscaster was reading the script for the first time.  Because much of the acting is wooden, Hammer comes across as an old pro.  Of course, it isn't a demanding role.  Sanders is intensely serious and takes no guff.  He explains to most of his victims why he is punishing them and how they deserve it.  He is Death Wish and the Punisher mixed together.  Mandylor proved to be bland, speaking with an unidentifiable 'European' accent.  The rest of the cast are unknowns and have tiny roles.

The point of this movie is the message.  Citizen Vigilante is an answer to the dramatic rise in crime across Europe and the various governments unwillingness to address it.  One of the storylines in the movie echoes a real incident: a 14-year-old girl was raped by 7 teens who were given suspended sentences.  Sanders claims that he will provide justice until the populace learns to provide it for themselves.

The movie is poorly made, poorly scripted, and full of holes, but the message is explosive.  Where most movies and TV shows will paint the white majority as a bunch of intolerant racists and the immigrants as entirely worthy, this movie flips that narrative.  The movie is a call to arms, a demand that the politicians reverse course, and perhaps a standard for the abused populace to gather behind.

Recommended.

Death on the Nile (2022)

Our story opens in 1914 with a unit of Belgian soldiers ordered on a suicide mission.  Luckily, a young soldier proposes a different plan.  This is Hercule Poirot.  The plan works, mostly.  However, Hercule is hit in the face by shrapnel.  His fiancé suggests he grow a mustache to hide the scars.  Twenty-three years later, the mustachioed Hercule visits a blues joint in London.  It just so happens that he witnesses the meeting of Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer).  Doyle is engaged to marry one of Linnet's friends, Jacqueline, but one cannot help but notice an attraction between Simon and Linnet.

Six weeks later, Poirot is in Egypt.  He happens upon Bouc (Tom Bateman), who served as an assistant in Murder on the Orient Express (2017).  Bouc invites him to join him and his mother (Annette Benning) in celebrating a wedding.  On arrival, he discovers that Simon has married Linnet.  A very disappointed Jacqueline has followed them on their various honeymoon stops.  Linnet approached Poirot and asked him to look out for her; she does not feel safe among any of the guests on the tour.  Gee, I wonder who is going to be murdered.

Branagh's Poirot is an action hero.  In both films, he dodges bullets and chases escaping culprits.  There's not a lot of action, but certainly more action than one would see from David Suchet, Peter Ustinov, or Albert Finney.  In addition to a dash of action, Branagh's Poirot is also obsessive compulsive.  He likes his eggs to be the same size, the feet of corpses to point in the same direction, desserts to be served in an amount that can be organized into a triangle (3 or 6, but not 7).  This seemed appropriate and the type of personality that would aid in his manic attention to detail and noticing things that don't quite line up.  I like the OCD, but drop the action hero aspect.

The movie has very anachronistic attitudes.  Bouc is in love with Rosalie (Letitia Wright), who is black.  Now, that would not raise eyebrows in 2022, but would be scandalous in 1937.  The same goes for Poirot's attentions toward Salome (Sophie Okonedo), the aunt of Rosalie.  Then there is Linnet's cousin, Katchadourian.  He is Indian, which hints at further interracial couplings.  None of this is viewed as scandalous or out of the ordinary.  The previous film in the series has this same ahistorical treatment of race when Daisy Ridley's character planned to marry Leslie Odom's character.  Just to hit all the demographics, there is also a lesbian couple, though they are concealing their relationship.  This ahistorical treatment of race has blanketed British films of the past decade (e.g. Mary, Queen of Scots).  On the one hand, I like the idea of depicting racial harmony, but on the other hand this feels like rewriting history.

There is a lot of CGI for the setting.  Pyramids, the sphinx, and other noted locations are all CGI.  As with the anachronistic casting, this took me out of the film.  Rather than thinking how amazing these Egyptian monuments are, I was thinking that the CGI wasn't convincing.  The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) filmed in Egypt and I remember how cool the 'sets' were.  45 years later and it's unconvincing CGI.  One expects better quality over time, not worse.

There is one other nitpick.  It is highly unlikely that a bullet from a dinky .22 caliber pistol could go through one person's torso and still have enough kinetic energy left to inflict a lethal chest wound on another person.  I'm sure that most gun aficionados groaned when that happened.

It is okay.  I prefer Peter Ustinov's Death on the Nile (1978) over this one.  Likewise, I thought Albert Finney's Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was better than Branagh's adaptation.

Free Fire

Boston, 1978.  Stevo and Bernie are driving an RV, heading toward a gun buy.  Bernie asks about Stevo's black eye and Stevo says the guy who gave it to him is dead should they ever meet again.  Meanwhile, Chris (Cillian Murphy) flirts with Justine (Brie Larson) while Frank (Michael Smiley) curses about Stevo and Bernie being late.  When Stevo and Bernie arrive, Ord (Armie Hammer) emerges from the darkness and searches all present for wires.  Satisfied, he leads them into an abandoned warehouse to meet Vernon the Gun Dealer (Sharlto Copley) and his 'associate,' Martin (Babou Ceesay).  There are minor hiccups but the deal looks to go smoothly until Harry and Gordon bring in the rest of the guns.  Harry is the one who gave Stevo the black eye!  The confrontation soon escalates to gunfire.

 

The setup is just an excuse to launch the gunfight.  Everyone gets shot, usually multiple times.  There is so much shooting that one wonders how much ammunition all of these characters had in their pockets.  It is also surprising how badly these people shoot.  Most characters are wounded badly enough that they can only drag themselves along the floor but not so badly that they bleed to death.  It amounts to a bunch of incompetent gunmen who are too stupid to runaway and too unskilled to win the fight.  Added to this, everyone is a bad guy.  Some are charming bad guys or funny bad guys but they are all bad guys and deserve their fates.

 

Sharlto Copley was the most entertaining character with lots of great lines.  He shows pride is his blue suit only to have it ruined bit by bit.  He's a bumpkin of an arms dealer and one wonders if this is perhaps his first gun deal.  Armie Hammer is clearly the most competent person and spends a great deal of time shaking his head at the incompetence of those around him.  His easy-going manner and snarky wit make him a fun character.

 

Mediocre.

Nocturnal Animals

The movie opens with a quartet of fat to very fat women dancing naked.  When the opening credits finish, it turns out that this is a art exhibit and some very realistic sculptures of the dancing naked women are sprawled on platforms while the dancing versions play on large screens on the wall.  The architect of this 'art' show is Susan (Amy Adams).  Susan is in a loveless marriage with Hutton (Armie Hammer), her second husband.  The morning after her show, a manuscript from her first husband arrives.  Susan starts reading and is immediately engrossed by the tale of Tony.

 

Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) is driving with his wife (Isla Fisher) and daughter to Marfa, Texas in the middle of the night when he is forced off the road by a trio of hooligans led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  The confrontation leads to Tony in one car while his wife and daughter are driven off in the other.  Shortly thereafter he is abandoned in the desert.  Hiking back to the highway, he is interviewed by Officer Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), who becomes his ally in tracking down his family.

 

The book has parallels to Susan and Edward's marriage and breakup.  Their relationship is loosely explored via flashbacks.  Interestingly, Edward is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, demonstrating that she identified Tony as Edward.  Susan is deeply affected by the book, often setting it down in the midst of some particularly unpleasant passages.  The linking of the book with her first marriage provides a mystery quality to the film.  Incidents in the book may or may not reflect incidents in their marriage.  The ambiguous ending allows the viewer to decide what it all means.

 

Not for everyone but I enjoyed it.  Well, except for that opening bit.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E

Our story opens with Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) crossing from West Berlin to East Berlin in 1963.  He seeks to convince Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) to defect and help him locate her missing father, a Nazi scientist who had been working for the United States until his disappearance two years ago.  Though she agrees, the pair are immediately pursued by Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), a top KGB agent.  The two prove well-matched but it is Solo who wins by getting Gaby to West Berlin.  The following day, Solo and Kuryakin are shocked to discover that they have been made partners in order to prevent a nuclear weapon from being developed by a criminal organization.  Gaby's missing father is believed to be involved, so Gaby will go with them to help ferret him out.  The original series never explained how it was formed or the first meeting between Napoleon and Illya; this movie fills that gap.

 

I only saw one episode of the original series and it was no where near as funny as this.  Solo and Kuryakin have a very adversarial relationship that provides many opportunities for laughs.  However, as the movie progresses, the two clearly develop respect for each other.  The movie often plays for laughs in other ways too.  Solo is clearly the suave agent with gift for seduction and Gaby has already started to like him.  Thus, it is funny when she is instead paired with Illya, who will play her fiancée.  Illya is much less comfortable around women and such is played to the hilt with Gaby.

 

The movie ends with Alexander Waverley (Hugh Grant) of British Intelligence putting together a special team for a new agency, the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement (UNCLE).  There is clearly room for a sequel.  Though I liked the movie and give it a thumbs up, the box office looks insufficient to deserve a sequel.