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Civic Duty

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 17 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 3 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Andrew Joiner
Directed by: Jeff Renfroe
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 4, 2007
Running Time: 98 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Canada
Summary
RATING: R for language and some threatening situations
Starring Peter Krause, Khaled Abol Naga, Richard Schiff, Kari Matchett, and Ian Tracey
When an Islamic graduate student moves in next door to an American accountant, the accountant's life becomes filled with suspicion of post 9/11 terrorist activities. (Freestyle Releasing)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Though Civic Duty seems to be a study in paranoid psychosis, it has just enough ambiguity to make you wonder if it isn't something else. You'll still be wondering when it's all over.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
While the film doesn't fully succeed in its striving for a Hitchcock-style ambiguity in its storytelling, it is consistently engrossing in its exploration of the fine line between civic duty and vigilantism.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Unfolding largely within the confines of a single apartment complex, the well-structured scenario is arresting but ill-served by an overly fussy visual treatment from helmer Jeff Renfroe, while Peter Krause's increasingly psychotic performance as an amateur snoop frequently threatens to cross the line between forceful and off-putting.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jim Ridley
Expected ironies about homeland security, racial profiling, and fears of the Other land like a rain of anvils, and director Renfroe matches Krause's worked-up performance with a jiggly, flashy approximation of off-brand Tony Scott.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
By the time the movie introduces an element of ambivalence in the story, lecture hall ennui has long ago set in, and no amount of jittery horror movie conventions can change it. With nowhere for any of the characters to go, literally, the story becomes a tendentious exercise in belaboring a point.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Ultimately less psychological thriller than polemic about the effects of living in an atmosphere of paranoia fed by daily threat-level assessments and round-the-clock TV news-channel coverage of fear-mongering speeches.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
The film is all cliched atmospherics and no real insight.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
It's a subject that guarantees a certain amount of liberal tongue clucking, though director Jeff Renfroe wisely concentrates on suspense instead of sermons.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Director Jeff Renfroe and screenwriter Andrew Joiner's flashy psychological thriller wants to say something important about the dangers of a fear-mongering media and resultant ethnic profiling in an age of terrorism, but their warnings are undone by a tricky plot that tries to have it both ways while leaving the audience arguing among themselves as to what it all means.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Shooting in digital video, director Jeff Renfroe needlessly amps up the proceedings with jittery camerawork, jump cuts, and other technical hiccups meant to disorient the audience.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Civic Duty stands out amid the new wave of terrorism-paranoia thrillers. It's a taut drama set primarily within the confines of two apartments in the same urban building complex and keeps the viewer guessing until the end regarding the reliability of its two central protagonists.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Matt Zoller Seitz
Initially promising, ultimately irritating psychological thriller.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Faced with a limited location and concept, Renfroe points his camera everywhere: The movie's seriously overshot, never settling for one angle when five would do.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Peter Krause, the fine actor from "Six Feet Under," gives a one-note performance that seriously undermines Civic Duty, a thriller mining minimal dramatic payoff from the potentially potent subject of post-9/11 paranoia.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
It wants to make an important political statement, which might have been dandy if it had anything remotely cogent to say.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
A clammy little number that might've been funded by the Department of Homeland Security.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
