Actor Armie Hammer is officially back, and apparently nobody got the memo, or nobody seems to really care. The trailer for Citizen Vigilante, his first real shot at a Hollywood comeback, arrived on May 27, and the numbers certainly tell a story. Quiver Distribution’s official YouTube upload has now reached 10,000 views. That’s a rough start for the Uwe Boll-directed film that actually looks pretty decent.
Hammer, the Golden Globe-nominated actor who was once one of Hollywood’s leading actors, watched his career collapse after sexual assault allegations surfaced in the early 2020s. By 2022, he was actually out of work and doing a desk job as a concierge at a hotel in the Cayman Islands. He called the whole period a “brutal experience,” saying he had been “canceled” and that he was actually “broke.”
By 2025, Hammer’s career started to take off again. And for the first time in a long time, he was actually turning down roles. Then he announced Uwe Boll’s The Dark Knight, which has now been renamed Citizen Vigilante after Warner Bros. issued the filmmakers a cease-and-desist letter.
Like Batman, who probably inspired the film’s original title, Citizen Vigilante follows a vigilante named Sanders who takes justice into his own hands. He hunts down criminals and becomes a public hero. This draws the attention of Interpol chief Henry, played by Costas Mandylor, who sees him as a threat.
Boll, the German filmmaker behind House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark, described it as a “very dark and violent movie” rooted in what he calls the current climate in Europe. But considering some of his films sit in IMDb’s Bottom 100 list, it’s hard to imagine this to be a masterpiece. Citizen Vigilante will be his 37th feature film, so perhaps he’s learned a thing or two by now, especially since he called himself “the only genius in the whole f***ing [movie] business.”
The trailer itself looks more competent than Boll’s reputation might prepare you for, and Hammer appears genuinely committed to the role. Citizen Vigilante is scheduled for release on June 19 via Quiver Distribution. Whether anyone shows up is a different question.
UPDATE: June 16, 2026
There may be more attention coming than anyone expected. Germany’s film ratings board, the FSK, has refused to grant Citizen Vigilante any age classification — not an 18+ rating, not even a “No Youth Clearance” designation — effectively banning it from distribution in the country. Boll has pushed back publicly, arguing the board is using youth protection as a pretext to suppress a film that addresses migration-linked crime in Europe. The first review of the film, by Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, describes it as a “furious anti-immigration” parable — essentially a Death Wish riff in which Hammer’s character becomes a social media folk hero for his vigilante response to street crime.
Whether Boll’s frustration is genuine or the ban is a calculated piece of pre-release theatre is hard to say. Films banned in one country have a long history of using that distinction as a marketing tool. Expect “Banned in Germany” to appear on a poster somewhere before long.
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