Director Uwe Boll Discusses His Controversial New Movie: Citizen Vigilante

Director Uwe Boll Discusses His Controversial New Movie: Citizen Vigilante.

The transcription below was done automatically and has not had any edits or changes applied at posting.

So I will answer some questions from a journalist because I just cannot have enough time now to write all the answers. So I do it verbally. What was the inspiration behind Citizen Vigilante and how long did it take to you to write? So I run with ideas about a subject matter like this, like a real death wish, taxi driver falling down kind of movie for a long time.

And I always walk around then with my dogs. I’m on the bike and I juggle ideas till I have a story structure. And then I write down the story structure. And then I write down, start writing scenes. A year looking at the political landscape in Europe. And I got so upset about the ignorance of the politicians in regards of security and security.

cultural changes in Europe over the time since 2016 till the first like huge wave of Syrian refugees came in. Talk about the casting for the film, please. And as you have a very interesting cast. Costas Mandalore, who plays Inspector from Interpol,

I worked together, I know from tons of movies like Saw and so on, and we worked together in Run. The movie was back at Apti from Captain Phillips, Amanda Plummer from Pulp Fiction, but was also about migration and so on. Holiday Island, that movie is visible on Thermal Plus and Showtime and other streamers. So I asked him to do this. I felt he’s perfect for it.

And Armie Hammer I saw in a talk show with Bill Mayer, Club Random, and listened to him, how he told his life story, the cancellation and all that stuff. And I didn’t really have him in my mind for the part first. But then I felt, wow, that guy’s an A-list actor, dominance, real hero, could play James Bond. So why not hiring him for Citizen Vigilante? At one point, somebody has to step forward and like uncancel him, you know?

And so I went in contact with him, had no agent manager or anything. So we made a deal and came to Croatia. We shot the film and it was a great relationship. And the rest of the cast, we basically casted locally in actually in Paris and Israel, in Berlin and in Croatia from a lot of different countries. Egypt also came actors to play in Citizen Vigilante. How was filming in Croatia compared to Vancouver?

I mean, Vancouver, similar to New York, wherever I shot is, of course, more a film hub, North American professionals, union-driven, very organized. And I love shooting movies there. Budgets are then higher. Croatia, you save a lot of money. You have more right of work state. So you can greatly shoot basically everywhere if you have a permit and you don’t disturb the traffic and so on. Very film-friendly in Croatia.

And I shot Max Schmeling there, Blood Rain 3, Blue Barella, Auschwitz, Run with Boris Velikand from a Bawble film. And I felt, why not going there? We can do it for a lower budget and still get a lot of production value out of it. And the story fit. You know, I need an American living in Europe somewhere in the city and situations are a little out of control. And he goes full on the Dark Knight

meets Dirty Harry. So, yeah, I mean, it was great to shoot in Croatia. I was not so happy that they also didn’t give us a tax rebate in the end because they said also the movie is in a way instigating violence and I was very mad with them because they promised me I get the tax rebate and then they refused to do it and I had to swallow up the cost. What were the biggest challenges and biggest problems you had while filming? I think everything moved basically flawless.

And I was very happy every day with the results. Yeah, it was. We didn’t have a lot of time to film. But I’m used to shoot with two movies parallel to Alexa minis and just go for it handheld with a gimbal. I think everything moved fine. There was no problem with the production as most of my films were.

Never had, in a way, the biggest challenges and the biggest triumphs. We had accidents sometimes or whatever, insurance cases, but nothing completely unusual. You were known early in your career for video game movies and have since done more dramatic films. How did this process evolve?

I started with more personal films and look, my first film was German frat movie, like a German version of Kentucky frat movie was a funny comedy. But then I did Barsch and Murder in Geneva about a real murder case in Germany. And then shortly in America, I did Heart of America with Elizabeth Moss about school shootings.

So in between the video game based movies, I did always also more dramatic films, political films. And then when the video game based movies kind of were done for me, I felt let’s do Assault on Wall Street about the 2008 bailouts. Daffur about the genocide in Sudan. Tunnel Rats about the Vietnam War. Rampage 1, 2, 3 about like kind of domestic terrorism.

Han now about a German case, Siegburg Stoic about a case in a German jail where people tortured the guy to death. So I’m very political, very dark-minded existentialistic and make very, in a way, tough films like this. And I was always existentialistic, you know, read a lot. I mean, I studied literature and stuff like this. But still, I had fun to do House of the Dead, The Lord of the Dark, Far Cry, Dungeon Siege and movies like this.

“Deathbound reports about a new House of the Dead, any truth to this, or future game firms?” So first of all, we have a game to Citizen Vigilante coming out on the PlayStation. I did that on Tunnel Rats 2, but that game came only out on Steam. I wanted to do a sequel to House of the Dead with the same cast, but Sega sold the rights to somebody else. Then we planned to do like a kind of an unofficial sequel, like Castle of the Dead.

But based on now the success of The Dish We Learned, I felt I cannot shoot this now quick. So for now, I canceled the Castle of the Dead film. And maybe in the future, we can come back to it. Any consideration to do another film in the Rampage series? Yes, I was developing something with Brendan Fletcher, Rampage 4. But we maybe almost could combine it.

because i’m very similar right with citizen vigilante part two maybe so uh we will see how we work on it but i think rampage one and postal are my biggest uh cult films and similar as it is vigilante very uncompromising totally different and um kind of mind-blowing blunt that’s the reason i love this film so much

What do you make of the rise of AI and the challenges facing the film and game industry? I mean, AI, first of all, is an easier, faster, better, cheaper solution also when it comes to film off CGI VFX. So you have more possibilities, can make it bigger, photorealistic. So a lot of people who are in this section will lose their jobs. In editing, sound mixing, I will also gain a lot of things. So as bookkeeping…

script reading, people who work at a streamer and should decide what script is good, what not, a lot of people maybe will lose their jobs too. I don’t think I… I mean, there will be full AI movies that look super photo realistic. I think something maybe will be still missing in that movie so that people still watch real movies.

And maybe in 20 years, not. Also, the audience changes. They watch micro dramas. They’re watching only little clips on social media. They don’t want to watch three and a half hours movies anymore. And I don’t want to watch three and a half hours movies. I watch 90 minutes movies. So we will see. But it will cost a lot of jobs. That’s 100%. And it will also make a lot of other jobs in other industries totally obsolete. And the big question is,

how to compensate the people who lose the job and maybe cannot find another job. I always tell everybody, be a plumber, carpenter, trades person, build something. That’s maybe the jobs they will survive in the biggest way. What do you have upcoming that you can talk about? Yeah, first shift two and three are today finished. I do today the last screening and watching it. First shift one was on Paramount Plus 20 weeks in the top 10.

And I hope I soon have a deal with Prima Plus again for First Shift 2 and 3 in short time. People love this show. New York police show. They just love it. And I love it to work with Gino Peszi and Kristen Renton and the whole team and crew and hope we can do even more First Shift films. But of course, I’m sitting here already running ideas, contemplating ideas,

citizen vigilante part two so that was it from my end thank you