Right now, Armie Hammer is getting more attention for his role in “Citizen Vigilante” than he has at any point since being canceled. The low-budget film, directed by Uwe Boll, has been celebrated by the right, climbed to the top of the Amazon and Apple sales charts, and been condemned by critics for its portrayal of immigrants and Muslims.
It’s a culture-war movie, and Hammer—whose last major Hollywood role came five years ago—now faces even greater challenges convincing a major studio to cast him.
Did Hammer know exactly what he was signing up for when he accepted “Citizen Vigilante”? He now wants audiences to believe he didn’t. His team has gone to
Puck News, a publication widely read in Hollywood, in what appears to be an effort at damage control.
Rather than celebrating the publicity, a source close to Hammer told the outlet he was deeply upset after seeing the finished movie, reportedly calling it “hateful” and “disgusting” and saying it was not the film he believed he had made.
The film, which follows Hammer as a vigilante targeting immigrants, became a flashpoint for political controversy. After German authorities blocked it from theaters over concerns that it promoted anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim themes, Elon Musk temporarily posted the full film on X.
According to a source in Hammer’s camp, the actor understood the project had a conservative slant but did not anticipate its final message. The source said director Boll worked quickly, providing only a short script rather than a full screenplay, and that Hammer felt the completed film differed dramatically from what he expected. The source also emphasized that Hammer was in a difficult position professionally and was willing to accept almost any acting job after years of struggling to find work.
Are we really supposed to believe Hammer had no idea what he was getting into? At one point in the film, his character breaks into a Muslim family’s home and kills the daughter, the parents, and ultimately wipes out the entire family because of the son’s involvement in a rape gang. Was that sequence absent from the “short script” Boll allegedly handed him before production?
I don’t believe for a second that Hammer was oblivious to the film’s messaging. Even if the screenplay was abbreviated and the final edit emphasized themes more aggressively than he expected, the premise of the project and the character he agreed to play weren’t exactly subtle. It’s understandable that an actor whose career had collapsed would be willing to take work wherever he could find it. But that’s different from claiming surprise after the film became politically radioactive. If Hammer now regrets the project, that’s one thing. Pretending he had no meaningful sense of what kind of movie he was making is far harder to accept.
