Civic Duty (2007)

With just a few exceptions, the post-9/11 movie has been a failure as a genre. Civic Duty could be the poster child for that failure. However, it's not for lack of a decent concept. The main scenario of Civic Duty confronted numerous ordinary Americans during the Bush administration, forcing them to modify their personal definitions of what constitutes "suspicious behavior," as well as grapple with their dormant tendencies toward racial profiling. Unfortunately, the only way to describe the filmmakers' handling of this topic is "idiotic." Director Jeff Renfroe and screenwriter Andrew Joiner have given such poor materials to Peter Krause, a genuinely good actor, that they've reduced him to the level of a hack, his every action a wild gesticulation or bug-eyed look of disbelief. Civic Duty's first problem is that the audience gets no opportunity to like Krause's downsized accountant before he unleashes unwarranted vitriol on the bank teller cashing his final check. From here he descends into a quick-temper world of petty suspicions -- first of his wife, then of the young Arab living next door. Krause's Terry Allen is supposed to be an update of the character Michael Douglas played in Falling Down -- a "white minority" who's been pushed to the edge. But all we see is Terry's edge, not where he was pushed from, so it's impossible to sympathize with him. Even more problematic -- from a strictly aesthetic point of view -- is the film's cheap, late-night-movie production values. Not content to limit his culpability to directing, Renfroe also submits one of the crudest, choppiest editing jobs you're likely to see in a mainstream release. The end result is a shallow, predictable, mean-spirited mess, which also happens to look terrible. The grim duty of seeing it should extend to critics, and no further. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide