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It was only a year ago that THE PURGE came out; a questionable movie filled with unresolved plot points, non-sensible characters, and social commentary so painful it makes DISTRICT 9 feel subtle. Luckily for Universal, on a 3 million dollar budget it made over 64 million, so here we are with THE PURGE: ANARCHY. Director James DeMonaco is at the helm again and is ready to reinvent the movie with an entirely new cast and direction. For those that were enticed by the original premise, this is the movie they were looking for; it is by no means perfect (still has two dimensional characters and annoying social commentary), but it contains enough thrilling action and crazy plotlines to make it an enjoyable ride.
The new movie again takes place in a near future America, where for one night a year all crime has been sanctioned. Of course, we don’t see anyone money laundering or cyber bullying, it’s mainly just murder. We follow the story of a Sergeant (Frank Grillo) as he seeks vengeance on Purge night. On the way he finds himself rescuing a mother/daughter duo (Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul) and a boyfriend and girlfriend (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez). He reluctantly agrees to help them reach safety in exchange for a car. Along the way they’ll be shot at by the Big Brother style government, the creepy upper class from THE HUNGER GAMES, and the general population wanting to “purge their souls of the inherent evil.” The craziness of the plot stems from the numerous tribulations they have to go through as different villains and obstacles stand in their way of reaching safety, or for our mysterious hero, revenge.
The movie is effective when it focuses on the thrill and action. The plentiful villains provide a buffet of different action types, and the city provides a much better setting than the ambiguously large house from the first movie. The crazy plot provides fun but it never gets too out of hand as it fills the 12-hour night to the brim.
The movie falters when it showcases basically anything else. Every character can all be described in one word, other than our hero, whose back-story is still hammered in and filled with clichés. The social commentary is also forced, as the movie takes every opportunity it gets to tell you about the morality of the purge or class warfare. Whole sections of the film are devoted to Michael K. Williams and his revolution against the upper class, even though we are trying to focus on our 5 main characters.
At many points in the movie the dialogue got a laugh in the theater despite it trying to set up a serious moment. The daughter (Zoe Soul) will try to lecture her savior about the ethics of The Purge while he is saving her life. Whenever someone is about to murder a person they feel the need to remind everyone that this is “their right handed down to them by the new founding fathers of America” instead of saying anything that would better dramatize the murder. There are quite a few plot lines that contribute nothing to the main story and feel like the world building you’d find in THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2, but it still ends up hurting the movie (just as it hurt THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2) and many plot lines end up being pointless. Whether it’s the emotions of the characters or the over-the-top politics, the movie seriously lacks any sense of subtlety.
The performances in the movie are average. Nothing stands out as either good or bad, and that makes it harder to discern the quality of the performances, because much of the fault is from the writing. It’s hard to deliver trite lines convincingly, and the two dimensional characters mean the actors don’t have much to work with. A lack of subtlety is pretty common among summer action flicks, and with good action this one might deserve a watch. If you need to see the interesting premise done better than the first, or are desperate to find a decent new horror-thriller, THE PURGE: ANARCHY will fill your desire. Otherwise, there are better survivor flicks that don’t have the political agenda and bland characters.
