United Kingdom, United States, Canada · 2006
Rated R · 1h 38m
Director Jeff Renfroe
Starring Kari Matchett, Richard Schiff, Khaled Abol Naga, Peter Krause
Genre Action, Adventure, Drama, Thriller
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An American accountant bombarded with cable news and the media's obsession with terrorist plots in the post 9-11 world, receives a jolt when an unattached Islamic graduate student moves in next door.
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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.
Los Angeles Times by 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.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
The film is all cliched atmospherics and no real insight.
The Hollywood Reporter by 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.
It's a subject that guarantees a certain amount of liberal tongue clucking, though director Jeff Renfroe wisely concentrates on suspense instead of sermons.
New York Daily News by 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.
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.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
A clammy little number that might've been funded by the Department of Homeland Security.
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.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by 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.
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