Movie Review: The Purge: Anarchy
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
The Purge: Anarchy is the follow-up to last year’s surprise hit The Purge (2013). The initial film made about twenty times its’ budget, in the US alone, so a sequel was inevitable.
I must confess to not having seen The Purge until just this week, in order to prep for this latest installation, of what now appears to be a mini-franchise. The Purge: Anarchy and the original are marketed as horror films and rightfully so. However, they could just as well be termed science fiction as the future/alternate history element that both films rely on involve a fictional political event. That event being the rise of a political party called the New Founding Fathers whose rise to power is based upon the success of The Purge to the economy and stability of modern America. Unemployment drops dramatically. Crime is nearly eliminated. Except for the one night of the year.
The Purge movies are written and directed by James DeMonaco. He also wrote The Negotiator (1998) the re-boot of Assault on Precinct 13 (2005).
The Purge is an annual American event held on March 21st of each year. For twelve hours all crime is legal. Naturally, all hell breaks loose each year. In the original film young, preppy thrill-killers attempt home invasion. This year the action spills into the city streets.
This year an eerie new ritual is about to start, they literally call it Commencement in the film, this story opens by introducing us to the folks we are going to be watching as they try to survive this year’s Purge.
A man getting ready with his many weapons is un-named (Frank Grillo) and is clearly preparing for big trouble. A waitress, Eva (Carmen Ejogo), and her daughter, Cali (Zoe Soul), bolt themselves into their small apartment for the night. Meanwhile, a couple in a car have trouble with their vehicle – Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez) will not be getting an help from the auto club tonight.
Eventually all these characters meet up and are soon on the run from revenge killers, thrill killers, gang-bangers, random psychos, and worse. The only person with any combat skills is the man with no name – which is reminiscent of the Clint Eastwood Westerns. Predictably, he does not really want to help any of these people but sort of finds himself stuck with them.
The background/framework concerns a political dissident Carmelo (Michael K. Williams) who is accusing the New Founding Fathers of inventing the Purge to aid the rich at the direct expense of the poor as basically a cash grab. The poor cannot afford to defend themselves as well as the rich and do in fact die in vastly disproportionate amounts. Carmelo’s argument seems clear. We see flashes of Carmelo on “new reports” and online manifesto’s that Cali, the youngest character, seems particularly taken with.
Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul in “The Purge: Anarchy.” Photo by Justin Lubin – © 2014 – Universal Pictures.
The political message here is pretty heavy-handed to say the least. Income inequality is a common buzz-word on CNN these days. DeMonaco is clearly aware of that and isn’t shy about showing us that rich = evil throughout the course of the film.
That isn’t to take anything away from The Purge: Anarchy as a rather good action/survival sort of film. The moral journey that our un-named hero makes is not at all surprising but it is extremely well done. Grillo does a great job of playing the conflicted avenger of wrongs caught up defending innocents – much like the one he wants to avenge. In one scene he is barking orders. In the next he is cracking wise and being protective, in a gruff way, of his charges.
The action is great. The acting is pretty decent. Grillo is the stand out. However, the attempts at socio-political commentary are far too thick for my taste. It is one thing to be relevant. It is another to be preachy under the guise of entertainment (where ironically there is still a large profit motivation going on let’s not forget).
The psuedo-psychology spewed in the film about “all the good the purge does” by allowing Americans to cleanse their souls with one night a year of violence was creepy, if absurd, in the original film. In this film that ramps up quite a bit. I get the whole blind masses following a pabulum political message equaling a greater horror, even beyond the blood being smeared across the screen, but wow. This really seems like a nightmare from a world where Fox News takes over the country.
The Purge: Anarchy is sort of far-fetched. After all you can always go to Canada for one day a year and avoid the crazies right? Be it Election Day or the night of the Purge we can all be thankful that neither political party in our fair land has a monopoly on stupidity or power. You have to wonder if Carmelo’s revolution will be realized in The Purge 3, which would intriguingly take the horror into the war/horror genre. Terminator (1984) meets Lord of the Flies (1963).
Steven Gahm
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