Elon Musk supported Armie Hammer’s attempt at resurrecting his film career by sharing a link to his new movie.
Musk, 55, posted a streaming link to Citizen Vigilante, a German film starring Hammer, 39, that was banned in its home country, via X on Friday, June 26. According to Variety, the link was ”active for 48 hours” before going dark.
The film, which was released in the U.S. on June 19, provided Hammer with his first big-screen role after a sexual abuse scandal that saw the actor’s career crumble in 2021. Per The Telegraph, Citizen Vigilante was banned in Germany as a result of its extremely violent “migrant-killing” subject matter.
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded the social media platform as X the following year, deciding to share a streaming link to the film meant anybody could watch it for free. It also led to reposts by X users. The film’s director, Uwe Boll, also shared a link via his own X account.
Per Variety, Citizen Vigilante sees Hammer return to the big screen as “an American abroad in Europe on a blood-soaked mission to eliminate all criminal migrants.” The outlet also offered a review of the film that painted it as “so astonishingly bad” that it felt like “deliberately sabotaging” Hammer’s attempted comeback.
In 2021, Hammer was accused of sending text messages to various women that detailed sexual fantasies of rape, mutilation and cannibalism. The Social Network star was also accused of raping a woman in 2017, but he denied all allegations made against him.
The Los Angeles Police Department declined to file charges against Hammer due to insufficient evidence after conducting a 2023 investigation.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on June 19, Hammer reflected on how grateful he was to have landed a role in Citizen Vigilante. “I’m pretty sure I cried. It was just this moment where I was, like, ‘I’m going to get to do the thing that I love more than anything, other than my children,’” he said at the time. “I would have done a f***ing cat food commercial. I just wanted to work again.” (Hammer shares daughter Harper, 11, and son Ford, 9, with ex-wife Elizabeth Chambers.)
He continued, “I was scared s***less until the moment Uwe said action for the first time. And then I was like, ‘Wait. I do know how to do this.’ There’s a reason I had the success I had.”
Boll spoke exclusively to Us Weekly in February about why he cast Hammer in the role, reiterating the actor’s star quality. “I’ve worked with some big actors like Ben Kingsley and Oscar-winning actors like J.K. Simmons, but they don’t have that star thing where you dominate the screen, like a Tom Cruise. [Armie] can do this,” the director told Us at the time. “I felt like after four years, it was time to give him another chance. He’s a great actor, he’s so talented, and it was so much fun to work with him.”
