Uwe Boll, the German filmmaker whose movies are often negatively criticized, is firing back after claims that Armie Hammer, the star of his latest film, “Citizen Vigilante,” was unhappy with the finished product.
“Armie was perfect for the part and I loved working with him. He was prepared and delivered every day on set. We both had a great time working together even if the subject matter of the film is very serious and real,” Boll explained in an email to TheWrap.
Boll continued: “It was clear that the film will split the audience but I never cared about reviewers – I care about the audience. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes or 4.5 on Amazon shows that the audience loves the film. 50% of the audience doesn’t feel connected anymore with the crap the studios are spitting out – they needed and wanted a blunt and hard film about reality.”
It’s unclear why Boll brought up audiences and critics when he was asked about Hammer, whose career took a precipitous fall in 2021 after he was accused by three separate women of sexual and emotional abuse. His marriage ended, he was dropped by his talent agency and his publicist parted ways with him. Although investigations by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Police Department did not result in criminal charges, his acting career was, by that point, largely over — until Boll came calling.
“Citizen Vigilante,” a hard-right thriller in which Hammer plays a man who targets immigrants and foreigners, briefly opened in theaters before heading to video on demand, a distribution path familiar to Boll’s films. But when Hammer finally saw the movie, he was apparently unhappy with the final product.
“The first time he saw it, he was in tears,” a source in Hammer’s camp told Puck’s Kim Masters. “And not tears of joy. He called me and said, ‘F–k. This is hateful, disgusting.’” Elsewhere in the Puck piece, the source within Hammer’s camp said that, “It’s not like he sent him a hundred-page script. When he saw the final product, he was, ‘That was not the movie I thought we made.’” And, indeed, it had previously been reported that Boll only provided a 50-page outline of the movie, which, based on clips shared online, looks as amateurish and hard-to-watch as anything in Boll’s oeuvre.
All this, while considering that Hammer, in the lead-up to the film’s release, told THR that he “would have done a cat food commercial.” This coming from a performer who was previously pegged as Hollywood’s next big thing, co-starring in David Fincher’s lauded “The Social Network” and landing lead roles in would-be summer blockbusters from Disney (“The Lone Ranger”) and Warner Bros. (“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”).
Casey Loving contributed reporting.