Director: Kelly Dolen
Cast: Daniel Lissing, Jamie Bamber, Lachy Hulme

There are some people who believe that the world is presently at the worst state that it has ever been. Though when you come to think about it, I think a lot of that impression comes from the fact that there is more media than ever to report on bad things. Crime, for one thing, is more widely reported than ever before. There are so many reports on crimes that it sometimes seems that the innocent public is in great danger despite the presence of police. So sometimes people feel they have to forget about the police and do something by themselves. But from what I have seen, it isn't all that easy. I remember reading a true story many years ago about a private citizen who decided to take the law into his own hands. What happened was that in the man's neighborhood there was an abandoned house that was being used as a crack den by drug users, and as a place to sell drugs by drug pushers. The man kept complaining to the police and the city about all this, but despite all those repeated pleas for someone to do something about it, the authorities did absolutely nothing. So one day, the man went to the crack house when it was empty, and set it on fire, burning it right to the ground. When the police investigated the arson, they determined who committed it, and arrested the man. The man was sent to court, and after all arguments on both sides were stated, the jury found the man not guilty of the crime of arson. But that wasn't the end of the story. The local drug users and drug pushers were so angry about the man burning down their base of operation, they started an informal campaign to harass the man. Eventually, the harassment got to be so much that the man was forced to move to another neighborhood.

As you can see from that true story I told you in the previous paragraph, the idea of becoming a vigilante may at first thought seem like a great idea, but in reality it can bring in a whole mess of problems. This is something that, when it comes to motion pictures that concern vigilantes, doesn't get to be brought up that option, whether it's by choice or by ignorance by the people that make these movies. Oh, don't get me wrong - I admit that when I watch movies concerning vigilantes that tap into that base emotion most of us have of getting revenge against people who have done wrong to us, part of me is pleased. The Death Wish movies certainly had a lot of fun moments. And when I watched Law Abiding Citizen, I enjoyed seeing criminal scum and uncaring bureaucrats getting knocked off in outlandish manners, even though the vigilante's grand plan got more and more unbelievable and absurd as it unfolded across the movie. Still, real life is a world that is much different than the world that is usually shown in motion pictures. I know that what was shown in Death Wish and Law Abiding Citizen would not be tolerated by most people in real life, especially authorities. If one of your good neighbors became a vigilante, would you feel comfortable living next to him or her? They could very well hurt or kill an innocent person while they are on a rampage to eliminate some sort of criminal element. They could also attract reprisals from the criminal element they are hunting down, and that could lead to a whole mess of further problems.

That's why I have an interest in vigilante movies that show that being a vigilante can create as many problems (if not more) than they could solve. But as you probably know, there aren't many such movies out there. So when I get the opportunity to watch one, I grab the opportunity. For example, some time ago I watched the 1962 vigilante movie 13 West Street (starring Alan Ladd), which was interesting since while it had some sympathy for its protagonist after being beaten up by teenage punks, it showed (realistically) the many problems that came up for the protagonist as he tried to track down his attackers. It was an interesting movie, so much so that I don't know why I didn't review it. But when I got my hands on a copy of John Doe: Vigilante, I decided to watch it with the intent of reviewing it later, not only because it promised to show more than one side of vigilante justice, but because it was Australian. You don't normally associate vigilante movies with Australia, so I though this might bring an extra fresh angle. The central character of the movie is an Australian man who is only identified as "John Doe" (played by Jamie Bamber from the TV show Battlestar Galactica). Over the course of the movie, we learn that Doe is a man frustrated by the criminal element of his society, not just from seeing criminals going through the revolving door of justice, but because Doe himself has been personally victimized by crime. Having enough, Doe puts on a mask and starts his own crime fighting campaign. But unlike superhero vigilantes such as Batman and Superman, Doe is not content with capturing these criminals in the act or after the act - he instead kills them. It doesn't take long for Doe's deadly vigilante spree to catch the attention of the public and the police, and while many people in the public are enamoured by Doe's actions, the police have a different opinion and are determined to catch Doe.

I know that my preference when it comes to vigilante movies, which as I mentioned was those that take time to explore the complexity and problems of the issue, is not one that is embraced by the general public - the general public tends to like to see a cinematic problem solved in a swift way that doesn't require much thought. To a degree I understand that; there are times when I just want to be entertained and not have a narrative bogged down by anything. Anyway, I was personally glad when I saw that John Doe: Vigilante did attempt to put less focus on the "blood and guts" aspect. That is not to say that there isn't any of that material here, but it is generally presented in a way that doesn't feel very exploitive. Some of the killings that Doe executes are just a few seconds long - he just walks up, kills his victim, and the scene then abruptly ends. As a result, it's harder to see these particular victims as scumbags who are begging to be killed off. Even if there is subsequently an explanation as to the victims' criminal past, the uncomfortable taste is still in our mouths. At the same time, there are also longer sequences of victims being killed off, not always by the Doe character. You might think that certain viewers would be able to get off from these particular scenes, but director Kelly Dolen presents these sequences in a particular cold light. Dolen tends to film these scenes somewhat of a distance away from the actors with a minimum of editing (sometimes not any editing at all), and as a result there isn't any flashiness or excitement injected to these killings. It feels very realistic, and it doesn't feel the least bit "fun".

As you could probably tell from that last paragraph, John Doe: Vigilante is not for audiences who want gratuitous and simple-minded action. It puts more focus on the intricacies of vigilante justice. However, the results of its look at the subject are kind of a mixed bag. On the negative side, there are a lot of questions that are brought up and are never answered. The criminals that Doe kills, for one thing, are repeatedly shown to have escaped justice or received light sentences from the courts, but it's never made clear why this happened. Also, at one point, a victims' justice group approaches a politician with a big petition requesting changes to the justice system, and the politician says that he can't do anything despite the petition. Why exactly he can't do anything is also never answered, and then the scene ends and is never brought up again. Fortunately, for every miss the movie makes exploring the issues, there are a few interesting moments that show some insight or unexpectedness. Naturally, the media gets a good jabbing, showing that at the beginning of Doe's rampage, reporters freely saying to their audience things like, "There's nothing to fear unless you're on John Doe's list!" However, when late in the movie Doe provides a live feed to one of his executions, the TV networks are so horrified by its nastiness that they claim they won't show it due to "regulations". It's also telling that the filmed execution does all the same make it to the Internet where millions of people do get to watch it. As for the police, they are shown to be pretty helpless, partly from ineptness, but it's also hinted some officials may be sympathetic (it takes Doe killing five victims before a task force is set up), and a police officer brings up the interesting problem to a reporter of whether the police should be focused on investigating the murders of typical innocent people or trying to find and apprehend Doe.

The copycats that Doe inspires are shown either as thugs mindless and more brutal than their hero, or realizing to their shock that their violent acts are hurtful and horrifying to themselves, which I think is pretty realistic. As for the main vigilante in the movie, John Doe, I do think that a little more work should have been done in the screenplay to make him clearer. There are some unanswered questions about him, such as whether he killed people to provide justice for the criminals' victims or for himself, how he managed to be so smart and resourceful in his murderous plans, or why he abruptly offers to stop killing for $10 million and then promptly forgets about this along with everyone else in the movie. All these confusing points I have mentioned to this point are significant holes in the narrative, but director Dolen does keep the movie moving briskly enough throughout that these holes just provide minor bumps to us instead of jarring us severely. While a low budget enterprise, Dolen does make the majority of the movie look acceptable enough, though at the same time Dolen seems strangely trying to present the movie as Australian enough to get government grants (a few mentions of Aussie places like Parliament Hill, for example) while at the same trying to make the movie come across as "American" enough (accents are very downplayed, locations look generic, etc.) in order to ultimately sell the movie to an American distributor. Also, Dolen botches things up very badly in the final scene of the movie, ending on a note that is both so confusing and seemingly in midstream that I didn't really know what had just happened or what would happen afterwards. John Doe: Vigilante is clearly a movie with a lot of rough edges, but with a core that is both offbeat and interesting enough that viewers able to forgive and sit through its many shortcomings will find it rewarding enough... particularly if they are able to pay little to no cost for watching it, as I was able to.

(Posted February 12, 2026)