Civic Duty (2007)

It's been a while -- at least a couple of weeks anyway -- since I've seen SUCH an overwrought piece of crap. The most banal actions are shot as though they're tense, employing methods such as a jittery camera, zooming back and forth between subjects, and deliberate blurring of a portion of the current face. At one point a deadbolt is thrown and we see it from the perspective of the hole: "aieee! The metal block's comin' at me!"

I do think the subject is kind of interesting. We Americans are being deliberately kept in a heightened state of distrust and fear by our own government. So of course a bored unemployed guy is going to get nervous when a middle-eastern minimalist moves in downstairs! Doesn't help matters that every single thing the new neighbor does is suspicious (e.g. throwing trash into the dumpster at 3 a.m., doing experiments utilizing beakers on his kitchen counter, and hoarding cash machine envelopes).

But the film completely negates any power its clumsy message could have held as it turns out that our protagonist is kuh-razy. Not just kinda "no one believes me and it's making me nuts" crazy -- completely and utterly out of his mind. Talk about a waste of time.

D+