Action thriller “Citizen Vigilante,” starring Armie Hammer, has been banned in Germany for its extreme violence and alleged anti-migrant message, according to director Uwe Boll. The film, billed as a modern-day riff on “Death Wish,” is being released in the U.S. on Friday by Quiver.
“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 Daily 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 six-two vote as I was told that the film was inciting violence against migrants.”
Variety has reached out to Germany’s rating agency FSK for comment.
“Citizen Vigilante,” which begins with a mother being stabbed to death by migrant criminals in front of her son, features Hammer as Sanders, an ordinary man who is enraged by the breakdown of law and order and decides to deliver vigilante justice to criminals and the corrupt officials that protect them. His targets are mostly, but not exclusively, migrants.
“Citizen Vigilante” was inspired by a notorious case in Hamburg in 2016, when a group of teenagers gang-raped a 14-year-old girl and left her for dead, only for the perpetrators to walk free with suspended sentences.
