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Product Details
Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) uses his everyman good looks to subversive effect in Civic Duty, an effective little thriller. Recently fired accountant Terry Allen (Krause) grows increasingly suspicious of his new neighbor, an Islamic student (Egyptian star Khaled Abol Naga) who keeps late hours. Allen's wife Marla (Kari Matchett, 24) believes he's being paranoid and their relationship crumbles under the pressure, which only leads Allen to obsess all the more about this possible terrorist--until he finally acts on his suspicions. As the confrontation escalates out of his control, Allen is forced deeper into a corner he never anticipated. Civic Duty is a lean, sinewy movie, making the most of its concise storyline and claustrophobic setting. Though the director tries perhaps a little too hard to insert some visual flash, this is essentially and actor's showcase. Krause, though not always the most expressive performer, does a good job of drawing the audience into his increasingly untrustworthy consciousness. Matchett and Naga turn in solid work, while Richard Schiff (The West Wing) is particularly strong as a doubtful FBI agent that Allen contacts. Civic Duty is more interested in psychology (and cinematic suspense) than politics, but it delves just enough into the issues around terrorism--What do we lose in the pursuit of security? What might drive a terrorist to such horrific acts? How do we fight violence without being consumed by it ourselves?--to give the movie some heft, something for an audience to chew on when it leaves. --Bret Fetzer
Product Reviews
 (2 stars) - Intriguing premise that loses its way
**1/2
"Civic Duty" is like "Rear Window" for the post-9/11 age. Terry Allen is a recently laid-off accountant who, thanks in large part to the influence of an ubiquitous, sensationalistic news media, has become increasingly obsessed with the "terrorist threat" hanging over the Western world. When a young Middle Eastern man moves into an apartment across the way, Terry immediately goes into surveillance mode, spying on his every move, following him around town, breaking into his home, and even reporting him to what Terry quickly learns, much to his dismay, is a decidedly uninterested and unconcerned FBI. Soon, his life and marriage are falling apart as he plunges ever deeper into his paranoia-driven madness.
"Civic Duty" starts off as a reasonably compelling psychological thriller, but the longer the movie goes on the more farfetched and heavy-handed it becomes. Peter Krause, who was so subtle and effective as the star of "Six Feet Under," is forced to go so over-the-top in his performance here that we begin to fear he'll burst a blood vessel long before the movie is over. The underlining doesn`t stop there, however, for Jeff Renfroe"s direction is filled with any number of hokey touches, including panning wildly or having the camera do virtual somersaults anytime anything even remotely sinister or suspenseful is about to take place on screen.
The movie first points out how the media, obsessed with profits and ratings, finds it necessary to bombard us with a steady stream of potential terror threats, both real and manufactured, on an around-the-clock basis - and then questions what kind of effect such sensory overload might have on an already unstable personality. And, beyond that, might the media and the political class it serves be turning all of us, to some degree or another, into raging paranoiacs, ready to pry into our neighbors` private business in the cause of national security? Unfortunately, this provocative theme gets buried under a truckload of paranoid-thriller cliches.
Kari Matchett, Khaled Abol Naga and Richard Schiff ("The West Wing") do well in their various roles, but the movie, well intentioned though it is, falls far short of its potential.
 (4 stars) - Better than you think....
Peter Krause and Richard Schiff carry on their backs what would otherwise would probably be a hilarliously bad B-movie. Krause gives the film a decidedly Hitchcockian feel, as you delve into his unemployement/war on terror psychosis with him. Worth watching.
(4 stars) - The perils of too much time at home
After three separate copies of CIVIC DUTY received from a well known Web-based DVD rental service, each of which skipped or stopped playing altogether, I finally purchased (at a discount) an original disc, which worked just swell. I'd only ever gotten as far as twenty-five minutes into the flick and I was hooked.
Here, Peter Krause (Nate Fisher in Six Feet Under - The Complete Series Gift Set) plays Terry Allen, a just-fired CPA married to Marla (Kari Matchett). The couple lives on the second floor of a courtyard apartment building, and Terry's loss of his job now endangers the loan they'd hoped to acquire for a new house. Terry needs a new job ASAP; the pressure is on.
Like most Americans, Terry is bombarded with daily news stories regarding the Arab jihadists' threat to the United States. Then, one day, he notices that a young, Middle Eastern-looking, single man has moved in downstairs across the courtyard. The new tenant, Gabe Hassan (Khaled Abol Naga), almost immediately demonstrates what to Allen is suspicious activity, like rummaging through the building's trash dumpster in the wee morning hours and receiving mail from a mysterious "Brotherhood". Instead of sending out resumes, Terry begins to follow Hassan around. This obsession based on no concrete evidence enrages Marla, especially as hubby's failure to find a new job puts the kibosh on the house loan. In any case, Terry becomes alarmed enough to approach the FBI, personified by Agent Tom Hilary (Richard Schiff). But the Feds fail to investigate as fast or as decisively as Allen thinks necessary, so the latter, still unemployed and with a crumbling marriage, takes matters into his own hands with disastrous consequences.
What will perhaps draw the viewer in, besides the obvious sinister threat that Terry perceives may exist, is the character of Allen himself, which, as played by Krause, who's got the All-American guileless, good looks that anyone could ask for, is that of your average, hard working, well-meaning, tax-paying citizen. It could be you or I. Plus, he's just been laid off and is having problems with the bank, spouse and an unhelpful government bureaucrat, which could also be you or I. We want Allen's suspicions to be valid, but begin to wonder about his sanity as he approaches, then goes over, the edge. That couldn't be you or I, could it? The moral of the story is perhaps not so much the need to keep vigilant in the face of faceless terrorism but rather the dangers of having too much time on one's hands paired with an active imagination. But then again, as Terry tells Marla, being paranoid doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong.
By the time the film rolled into its closing frames, I'd already mentally improved the script to deliver more of a "gotcha" ending. Mind you, the conclusion as it stands is good enough to rate four stars, but not more.
I've begun surreptitiously watching our neighbors' windows with binoculars for some indication that they're as dangerous as I think they are. One in particular, a seller of antiquarian books, I suspect of altering the punctuation in his wares.
 (3 stars) - Does'nt Try Hard Enough
I had high hopes for this movie based on the feedback , the trailer and the cover - but it would like to be a "Disturbia" or "Rear Window" but it fails to connect .
Obviously using a low budget - nothing wrong with that - but at least replace a low budget with some good script . At times the movie dragged a bit - but overall got the American paranoia message across in a dramatic way - worth a look !
(2 stars) - Hallucination
"Civic Duty" was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival. Director Jeff Renfroe had previously directed a feature titled "One Point 0." This was the first effort of screenwriter Andrew Joiner that I found. Peter Krause was nominated for Golden Globe Awards for his hit TV series "Six Feet Under" in 2001 & 2002 as well as for the Emmy for the 2005 season. As Terry Allen, his character increasingly loses touch with reality, becoming more & more paranoid. Kari Matchett played his wife Marla. She's appeared on several TV series including "Invasion Iowa" in 2005 and "Heartland" in 2007. Rarely does a performance irritate me, but I found her completely unsympathetic. I could not detect any kind of chemistry between her and Krause. They seemed like ships passing in the night from the first frame. Her hard edge demeanor would have made her excellently cast in a film like Waitress (Widescreen Edition), but she did not fit as the stable one in the relationship. She should have been the one flipping out and Krause should have been the stable supportive spouse. Egyptian actor Khaled Abol Naga who was in an Egyptian film A Citizen, a Detective & a Thief played the downstairs neighbor Gabe Hassan whose actions are interpreted as a terrorist threat by Terry Allen. He turns in an excellent performance from rude insolence to frightened hostage. Richard Schiff, who was in "The Martian Child" and has played in "Ray," "I Am Sam" as well as his best known role on TV's "West Wing," plays FBI agent Tom Hillary whose lack of action triggers Allen. The film doesn't work for me because it is hard to have a main character who is crazy. The audience has no one to hold onto. The last sequence in the institution was unclear to me. I couldn't tell if Allen was literally seeing a TV news report about envelopes or whether it was his hallucination interrupting a televised golf match. It was a critical point that didn't register with me. While Krause makes a brave attempt to follow Terry Allen's mental disintegration, the story didn't play well for me. I was glad when it was over. Taxi!
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