The Truth Behind Citizen Vigilante - Uwe Boll | PBD Podcast | #829

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:00)
Citizen Vigilante is officially number one on Amazon and number one on Apple, one of the most controversial movies I've ever seen before. If you've seen it, you already know what happened to your emotions. Rage, mixture of feelings of, what is wrong with this guy? I'm siding with him, he's a good guy. No, he's a bad guy, why did he do this?
And if you haven't seen it, when you do, I watch it two times in three days, just to see what angles this one, and by the way, it is dark, it is nasty.

**Uwe Boll** (0:26)
Glorifying the violent message of this film.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:29)
But it's become hot. Elon Musk made the movie free on X for 48 hours. And so I reached out to the writer, director, and producer, Uwe Boll, who's written a lot of controversial things. This guy's even fought five critics that said bad things about his movies, and each one of them he knocked out, because he used to be a boxer back in the days, growing up in the streets of Germany. And I ask him a few questions, I want you to kind of see it for yourself. One, does he feel people will be inspired to do something about this? Because other people watch it, they're like, wait a minute, what's happening in Germany? I'm going to be Germany's Citizen Vigilante, I'm going to be UK Citizen Vigilante, I'm going to be Australia's Citizen Vigilante. There's a reason why this movie's been banned in Germany and others because they're worried it could lead to something. But it's also popular. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it an 8%, but the people gave it 94%.
94% of people who watched this movie, they liked it. Why? There's a reason for it. Having said that, enjoy this interview with the director, producer and the writer of the movie Citizen Vigilante.
Uwe Boll, Uwe, it's great to have you on the show here today.

**Uwe Boll** (2:05)
Thanks for having me.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:06)
So, I mean, I got a lot of questions to go through with you, but when you made this movie with Army Hammer, did you think it was gonna be a number one movie on Apple and Amazon? No.

**Uwe Boll** (2:18)
But I think, I know I would steer the pot, you know, that people will flipping out about the movie.
That was clear for me because I did something nobody else even tried to do to give some, like, brutal, real impact into this whole mess of the migration situation in Europe. You know, so I really wanted to put the finger in the wound and show what other people in other movies never would mention. They're covering it up, they're sugarcoating it, and I was furious about it. That's the reason I did that.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:58)
Okay, so we'll get into the movie, but before getting into the movie, can you share with the audience your background? You got a very interesting background on what you've done. So maybe for the audience that doesn't know, those who know you, they have an opinion about you, but those who don't, can you share with them your background?

**Uwe Boll** (3:14)
Yeah, so I do a lot of movies. I did 40 movies. There were a lot of stars in it, Jason Stess and Ben Kingsley, Geraldine Chaplin, Meat Loaf, Michelle Rodriguez. I shot with a lot of stars, but I started with like 60,000 bucks and doing German Fright Movie. That was the German version of a Kentucky Fright Movie, a comedy I love. And that movie was shown in a movie theater that brought me into the business. So I learned making movies basically in making movies. And so because nobody wanted to produce me, I turned into my own producer too. And that was, I think, the best decision of my life, because so nobody could really take advantage of me in the system. And I was able to...
My film company from 1991 is still the same company. So I never went bankrupt or anything.
It's still the same company. And as I said, I made big movies, like In the Name of the King with Jason Statham and Burt Reynolds was even in Ray Liotta for 20th Century Fox and some for Universal, Lone in the Dark, Blood Rain, video game based movies. But I did also a lot of political movies, Assault on Wall Street about the 2008 banking crisis, Daphore about the genocide in Daphore. Very hard movie like Hotel Rwanda style, Rampage, Postal. So I did a lot of things I wrote myself. They're more political, more serious. And of course, the big commercial movies, more like popcorn movies basically.