Civic Duty (2007)
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Reviews Counted: 54
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 24
At times a tense and provocative thriller, Civic Duty struggles to move beyond its one-note premise.
Average Rating: 5.4/10
Critic Reviews: 24
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 13
At times a tense and provocative thriller, Civic Duty struggles to move beyond its one-note premise.
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Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 29,571
My Rating
Movie Info
Where does legitimate concern end and paranoia begin? A man finds himself walking that fine line in this tense independent drama. Terry Allen (Peter Krause) is an accountant who lives a seemingly ordinary life until he loses his job. Unable to buy the new house he was hoping to get for his fiancée, Marla (Kari Matchett), Terry spends most of time in his apartment, looking for job leads, sending out resumés, and feeling increasingly powerless. As Terry watches more and more stories about the war
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Cast
-
Peter Krause
Terry Allen -
Kari Matchett
Marla Allen -
Ian Tracey
Lt. Lloyd -
Richard Schiff
Agent Hillary -
Khaled Abol Naga
Gabe Hassan -
Mark Brandon
Night Anchor -
Val Cole
Morning Anchor -
Laurie Murdoch
Loan Officer -
Vanesa Tomasino
Bank Teller -
Mike Roberds
Post Office Clerk -
Agam Darshi
Nurse
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All Critics (57) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (26) | DVD (6)
A flawed but worthwhile examination of paranoia and clashing cultures in the 21st century.
Top CriticIt does build up considerable suspense and tension; Renfroe has learned well from Hitchcock.
The film's pace lags toward the end, but its grasp of manufactured fear's dreary pervasiveness never falters.
The vivid sense of time and place is the best thing about the initially promising, ultimately irritating psychological thriller Civic Duty.
As thoughtful as it means to be -- its agenda is outlined by on-the-nose dialogue from its characters -- Civic Duty does little to go beyond this premise.
A sharp 9/11 twist on Rear Window paranoia, Civic Duty is all the more effective for its chilling plausibility.
Terrorism themes paranoia = not for kids.
See it for Krause's incredibly great work, but be warned that everything around him isn't nearly as good, especially the final reel.
mostly suffers from overwriting
You know where this is going and that it's going to end badly. The only question is for whom
If we can ignore the plot's too-often dips into cliché, we just might walk away with a lot on our minds.
Eventually it all boils down to cliché, with home invasions by Terry, physical confrontations between Terry and Gabe, a hostage situation, a main character getting gunned down, and all the other standard thriller tropes that might excite the kind of audie
Terrorism can make you crazy. Or more accurately, U.S. media hype about terrorism can drive you to believe.
Andrew Joiner's clever and layered screenplay just may be one of the best of the year, particularly as it requires thought and may even spark debate.
Krause and his character are the entire movie. Watching him fall apart is fascinating and the ending has a particularly nice, if expected, twist.
"Rear Window" updated to post 9-11 corporate downsizing has too many mixed messages to convey the simple fear of a classic thriller.
There's the faint air of a solid cable movie about Civic Duty...but the questions it raises are provocative enough to make it worth seeing.
Until it becomes simply a hostage dilemma, the film maintains an uneasy air of mystery and suspicion.
An intense and startling movie for our times. It hits you right between the eyes.
A claustrophobic setting and the paranoid concerns of a modern world make Jeff Renfroe's "Civic Duty" an effective psychological thriller.
Audience Reviews for Civic Duty
Super Reviewer
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]Terry is an accountant who has just been laid off and lives with his photographer wife Marla(Kari Matchett). Together, they dream of owning their own house. In the meantime, along with watching the news, he dutifully sends out numerous copies of his resume while being distracted by the suspicious behavior of their new neighbor who is of Middle Eastern descent. To quell his fears, Marla visits him and learns his name is Gabe(Khaled Abol Naga) and that he is a graduate student. That's still not good enough for him, so he contacts an FBI Agent, Tom Hilary(Richard Schiff), who promises to look into it...[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]While the banal and uninspired "Civic Duty" certainly has its heart in the right place by exploring the war on error, civil rights, racism and the lynch mob mentality(Terry's owning a gun speaks to his generally being afraid), it stumbles badly with wafer thin chracterizations.(But Richard Schiff does excel...) While the movie may have had a chance if it had been a play(Where the speechifying would have worked better), it is still hard to believe the story progressing beyond a certain point. I am sure a lot of people contact the FBI every day with their suspicions but that's probably as far as it ever goes. Even the situation feels dated by now. Usually after a great catastrophe, news watching is the norm to get as much information as possible but as time wears on, things return to normal as much as possible, which include television viewing patterns.[/font]
Super Reviewer
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Latest News on Civic Duty
May 3, 2007:
"Civic Duty's" Peter Krause Talks TV, Terrorism, And ParanoiaOn HBO's "Six Feet Under," Peter Krause played Nate Fisher as an outwardly cool guy...
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