Bill Hicks once told a funny joke about watching CNN non-stop which he did not recommend doing. If only Terry Allen(Peter Krause) in "Civic Duty" had followed such sage advice...(Not to mention the advice on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) 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... 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.
March 22, 2008
Top Critic
