Armie Hammer vigilante film banned in Germany over anti-migrant content, director says

German-born director Uwe Boll says his new action thriller “Citizen Vigilante,” starring Armie Hammer, has been effectively banned in his home country after regulators refused to certify the film. The director claims regulators say it was deemed to incite violence against migrants.

The film, billed as a modern-day riff on “Death Wish,” was released in the United States on Friday by Quiver. It did not receive an age rating from Germany’s FSK certification board, rendering it commercially unavailable in the country. 

“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,” Mr. 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 6-2 vote as I was told that the film was inciting violence against migrants.”

The film follows Mr. Hammer as Sanders, an ordinary man enraged by what he views as a breakdown of law and order, who decides to deliver vigilante justice to criminals and the corrupt officials he believes protect them. His targets are mostly, but not exclusively, migrants. The film opens with a mother being stabbed to death by migrant criminals in front of her son. 

Mr. Boll said the film was inspired by a 2016 case in Hamburg in which a group of teenagers gang-raped a 14-year-old girl and received only suspended sentences.

“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 Telegraph. “There is a huge difference between so-called ’hate speech’ and stabbing people in the neck. But facts don’t matter anymore.”

Mr. Boll also pushed back against what he described as a reflexive labeling of conservatives as extremists.

“Now you’re being told that if you’re a conservative about anything — social, sexual, political — that you’re a Nazi,” he said. “If you question anything — such as the hundreds of billions being pumped into Ukraine — then you’re either a friend of Putin or a Nazi or both.”

When the Telegraph put the question directly to him, Mr. Boll laughed before replying: “I am not a Nazi!”

Mr. Hammer, 39, faced multiple accusations of sexual abuse in 2021 and saw his career largely collapse in the aftermath. No criminal charges were filed. Mr. Boll said he cast him “because he’s a great actor, and also because he was canceled and wanted to work,” adding that Mr. Hammer “wasn’t charged with anything, there was no lawsuit.”

Mr. Boll also said he hopes to work with actor Kevin Spacey, who prevailed in civil and criminal proceedings stemming from sexual misconduct allegations.

“I’d love to cast him in a strong male lead in one of my pictures, but by doing so, I can guarantee that the film would not get an American distributor,” Mr. Boll said. “He won all the lawsuits and legal cases, and now he’s stuck in these very cheap exotic movies he’s making now. I think he should come back and get another shot.”