In my opinion, there wasn't a more finely acted TV drama in the past decade than Alan Ball's "Six Feet Under." It was a show that relied more on character-driven development than plot development, which tended to alienate fans of more action oriented series. As a showcase for actors, though, it was unmatched. Since that show's departure in 2005, Peter Krause (who played the lead in the series, Nate Fisher) has wandered around, giving his all to projects that weren't really up to his tremendously honest, expressive, and naturalistic acting abilities (think the somewhat fun but ultimately empty "Dirty Sexy Money" and the standard dramedy "Parenthood")."Civic Duty," a project he co-produced with writer Andrew Joiner, matches up to Krause's range and skill as an actor. This is one of those scripts that is, for all intents and purposes, perfect. It is well constructed and well-paced, and it has the cahones to not cop to a specific stance just because it's PC or trying to please everyone.The setup? Krause plays Terry Allen, an out of work accountant who feels himself becoming more alienated and angry as the days slog by. His wife is becoming more annoyed with his growing obsession with terrorist threat sites and the warning levels that are constantly broadcast on cable (this is shot in 2006, BTW).In what is a very cool post-9/11 take on Rear Window, Terry begins to spy obsessively on his new Middle-Eastern neighbor, collecting and constructing evidence that points to something extremely sinister. I won't give away anything else because the action escalates very quickly about half-way through the picture, at a nicely unexpected velocity.As I mentioned, this type of plot has been done before in other films, and the big stumbling point usually is political correctness. "Civic Duty" manages to obviate this whole rat-hole neatly with just the right touch of ambiguity. The ending is brilliant....absolutely brilliant.Don't miss this one, Krause-fan or not.

**SPOILERS** It's when accountant Terry Allen, Peter Krause, was laid off his job that he became influenced by the no-stop bombardment of cable news networks in how dangerous the world is.Not being able to get a job and with prices, of gas food as well as rent, going sky high Terry started to slowly focus his hatred and frustration on those whom the news outlet for the most part blamed most of his problems on! Those, like Terry called them, middle-eastern looking guys who want to do him and his fellow American in; In every way they possibly can including killing themselves in order to do it!It's one day when Terry noticed his new next neighbor-a middle-eastern looking guy-that his paranoia of whats been happening in the world, in regards to 9/11 like terrorism, shot to the roof! The middle-eastern looking guy turned out to be a Arab exchange student Gabe Hassan, Khaled Abol Naga, who had a strange habit of dumping his garbage at odd times at night, like between 2 and 3 AM. Hassan also had his friends scuzzy and shifty eyed looking fellow Arab, or middle eastern looking guys, show up at his place with all kinds of strange packages for reasons other then just plain partying or shooting the breeze!Peeking into the dumpster and checking out Hassan' garbage Terry notices a letter from the "Sons of Benevolance" that he received that looked like some kind of Islamic terrorist front organization! Meanwhile back home Terry's wife Marla, Kari Matchett, starts to get very concerned and worried about her husbands strange behavior to the point when later in the film where she leaves him because he refuses to seek help for it! Knowing he's on to something and refusing to let go of it Terry gets in touch with the local FBI office in the person of FBI Agent Tom Hilary-Richard Schiff-who, to his shock and surprise, tells Terry to lay off Hassan if he doesn't went to end up behind bars in a federal prison!Feeling more like a criminal, or even terrorist, then a concerned citizen doing his civic duty to prevent another 9/11 by how he's treated by Agent Hilary Terry goes out on his own to stop Hassan, who's experimenting with chemical agents in his kitchen, from pulling off, in Terry's mind, a major terrorist attack! It's then that Marla now back home, from her sisters, again gets into the act by going to the local police in order to have them stop her by now emotionally deranged husband from doing something that he'll end up regretting for the rest of his life!***SPOILERS*** There's really no heroes or villains in "Civic Duty" but only victims. You can't dislike Terry for what he does because he's become a victim of the news media that has been proved, at least since the run up to Iraq War, to be wrong far more times that it's right! In its at times hysterical and unprofessional way of informing the American pubic about what's happening in the both Middle and Near East as well as the world at large! As for Gabe Hassan-the middle-eastern looking guy-he in fact came across as being the most honest and decent person in the entire movie! It's also Hassan who really gives a shocked and totally befuddled Terry, as well as the audience, the reasons what motivates middle-eastern looking guys like himself to do the horrible things that they do! There's also in a small but important role in the film Police Let. Randell Llyod played by a Charles Bronson-without his famous mustache-looking Ian Tracy. It's Let. Llyod who, unlike the insensitive FBI Agent Hilary, tries to get Terry to give himself up and release his hostage promising him help, not jail, if he does.**MAJOR SPOILER** Really shocking ending that will blow you, like it did Terry, away in that we learn that not everything that was going on in the film was as clear cut as we were made to think that it was. But by then the damage was already done due to the paranoid climate that kept those who should have known better, in the Government, from thinking straight and realizing that they in their mindless self serving and self righteous actions were ultimately the cause of it!

We open the movie with our protagonist depositing his severance check at the bank, and when told he could save himself time by using the ATM he gets angry. Later on, when he is at the post office and is told that he could save time by using a machine, he almost loses it, but holds his anger in. From the first incident, and then reinforced by the second, I realized that Terry has a problem with machines, and especially with those who tell him how convenient they are. (Keep in mind the theme of how convenient they are.) This is later brought up with an inference that his job could be done by a machine. We also have small snippets and comments that Terry is not too mentally stable, and we see this as well as the movie progresses. The arrival of a new neighbor, a man of middle-eastern descent, sets the final stages of Terry's tenuous grasp of reality, and the final scenes in the movie, going. The acting was spot on, though at times the camera work was a bit too jumpy, even if it was supposed to relay Terry's world (how unstable it was becoming). IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, STOP READING NOW. I have read numerous threads and blogs about this movie, but to date have not read anything to support the fact that Hassan was, or was not, a terrorist. But I shall leave the readers with this thought: Remember when you were in college (for those who went) and all the books and notebooks you had all over the place? How about those of you who attended graduate school? I've been in academia for ages, and even when I am taking but 1 class, there are reference books, as well as that class' textbook around. In every scene inside Hassan's apartment, and we saw every room and most every closet, I did not see one notebook or one textbook, and I found this odd that a graduate student did not have one single academic anything where he lived. The only thing he had was his laptop, which might work if one was a history major, but not a science (chemical engineer from what I concluded when he was describing to Terry what he was studying). So now, was he truly a terrorist or not? And the final scene of the movie, when Terry was watching the TV (another reason to shut the darn thing off; what with all the Too Much Information Can Be Bad for You going on 24/7) and it's a golf show, was the news snippet real or not? I think it was what he was remembering hearing, as the announcer said this incident with the cyanide on the flaps of the envelopes happened weeks prior. Or how about this? The entire movie, much like Slater in He Was A Quiet Man, is Terry's psychosis remembering events as he knows them, not as they actually occurred. This would explain why the FBI agent did not do anything and the death of his wife from a single shot from his own gun (from far away and small caliber too!). If you have seen this movie, but were not too sure or did not like it, watch it again, but this time pay special attention to Hassan's apartment and what Marla and Agent Hilary say to Terry.

I found the characters to be very believable. The conversational script was very realistic. I enjoyed all of the characters. The pacing of the movie keep me on the edge of my seat. Contrary to other comments, I found the FBI agent to be very 'real' and the script here to be exceptional.I know what's it like to laugh all the way through a movie and have had this experience when it wasn't appropriate. It happens to me when the writing is poor or the story line unbelievable. I'm sorry that there are some that were affected this way - this is absolutely opposite of my experience.The topic is timely and intense and well handled in the context of our times. There are many questions that are asked in this film that should be asked over and over. We don't have answers and maybe that frustrates some.