Terry Allen (
Peter Krause) is an all-American accountant who becomes obsessed with CNN's post 9/11 coverage of the "War on Terrorism" after losing his job.
His world gets a lot smaller when a "profile-fitting" Islamic student moves in next door. When others disregard Terry's theories about his neighbour, he decides to take matters into his own hands to uncover the truth.
Civic Duty probably won't be seen by many people, which is unfortunate because it's effective on so many levels. It effectively dramatizes just how difficult it can be to identify a neighbor as a would-be terrorist, where nothing ever is as it seems; it exposes the attitudes and conditions that compel us to turn a blind eye to lurking suspicions; and it gives us a dark but necessary vision of what can happen when you breach the boundaries of civility and take things too far. Civic Duty is the kind of movie that might inspire a TV series that informs us on how to approach suspicious activity with greater subtlety and cunning, and it succeeds in making us think more deeply about our civic duty
With the hype of Disturbia, this film gets over looked. It falls short of being the Hitchcockian thriller of "Rear Window". That said the movie was not bad. The ending is somewhat predictable. Civic duty makes you think about many of the social and political issues in the world today. How do you know who is a terriorist? Usually you don't Know, until it's too late.