Elon Musk posted Armie Hammer's film "Citizen Vigilante" to his X account on Friday, making it available to his 240 million followers for approximately 48 hours before the link went dark on Saturday.
The film, directed by German filmmaker Uwe Boll, was released in the United States on June 19. It had already drawn significant attention before Musk's post, largely because Germany banned it outright. According to reporting by The Wrap and Variety, German authorities refused to give the film a rating due to extreme violence and what they characterized as an anti-immigrant message.
Boll denied that characterization. "The rating system refused to give us a rating [in Germany], so now you can only watch it if you bring in a Blu-ray from Austria or Switzerland," Boll told The Telegraph. "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 6-2 vote as I was told that the film was inciting violence against migrants."
Boll also addressed the subject matter that inspired the film. "If you look at what happened in Hamburg, where the rapists walked free without any penalty, the coverage in the media was like 'Oh, the poor perpetrators,'" he told the outlet, referring to a 2016 case in which a group of teens raped a 14-year-old girl and left her for dead. "It's as if we're living in a completely insane and absurd political environment, especially in Europe, where people have completely lost track. There is a huge difference between so-called 'hate speech' and stabbing people in the neck. But facts don't matter anymore."
In the film, Hammer plays an American businessman abroad in Europe who goes after rapists, violent criminals, and judges before becoming a wanted man himself. Other cast members include Costas Mandylor, Désirée Giorgetti, Steffen Mennekes, Neb Chupin, and Mukit Abdul Hamid.
Musk did not simply post the film quietly. He appeared in a video alongside Boll on the platform. "Here it is. It's Uwe Boll, director from Citizen Vigilante. The hour's up, the movie's now available on X for 48 hours. Enjoy," Musk said in the clip. He also replied to a post showing the film had reached the number two spot on Apple TV charts, writing that "'Citizen Vigilante 2' will be even better." Boll confirmed on X that a sequel is planned for 2027.
Variety's review of the film was sharply negative. Critic Todd Gilchrist wrote that "Boll, a cinematic embarrassment since the early 2000s, here delivers a violent, incoherent, morally bankrupt slice of exploitation on the same qualitative level as 'House of the Dead,' 'Alone in the Dark' and 'BloodRayne.' In fact, the film is so astonishingly bad, it almost feels like the writer-director-producer is deliberately sabotaging his star Armie Hammer, whose intended comeback can only be harmed by this project."
The release marks a significant moment for Hammer, whose career collapsed in 2021 after multiple women came forward with allegations against him involving rape, sexual, and emotional abuse. Hammer denied all the allegations, stating he had only ever engaged in consensual acts. No criminal charges were filed after an LAPD investigation, and prosecutors declined to file charges in 2023. He was nonetheless dropped from numerous projects and largely disappeared from Hollywood. Since the allegations surfaced, he has appeared in just one film shot after 2021, last year's "Frontier Crucible."
