Civic Duty

An intense and startling movie for our times, Civic Duty hits you right between the eyes. In the second variation on Hitchcock's Rear Window in less than a month (Disturbia was a teen version), a happily married accountant (Peter Krause) is let go from his new job and, spending too much time alone at home, becomes obsessed with watching the mysterious movements of the Islamic student who just moved into his apartment building. In this post-9/11 environment full of incessant 24-hour cable news reports promoting fear and doubt, the Middle Eastern man in question appears on the surface to be plotting something, and filmmakers do nothing to point the audience away from having the same suspicions as Krause. Clearly he believes he is living across from a terrorist, and elicits the help of a cynically jaded FBI agent (Richard Schiff) to confirm what he thinks he already knows. When he doesn't get satisfaction, he begins acting irrationally, and in one particular sweat-inducing scene, even secretly searches the guy's place. With his wife and authorities basically turning their backs on him, he proceeds to really go over the edge. Krause, so good in Six Feet Under, delivers a harrowing portrait of one man's incredible descent into paranoia. This independently made drama is an intimate, close-up look at the creeping madness and anger that seems to have invaded America since that bleak day in 2001. It's worth seeking out in theaters, or eventually on DVD.