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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 18 July 2014
This article is a review of THE PURGE: ANARCHY.
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“We’ll be fine; I promise,” Shane (Zach Gilford)
4:34pm, March 21st, 2023, Los Angeles, the annual Purge is one hour 26 minutes away from commencing. Opening out from house-under-siege predecessor, ANARCHY takes to the streets and focuses on a quintet of characterless leads caught up in what should have been a MAD MAX-style maelstrom, yet is in execution a bargain basement sadistic thriller.
4:34pm, March 21st, 2023, Los Angeles, the annual Purge is one hour 26 minutes away from commencing. Opening out from house-under-siege predecessor, ANARCHY takes to the streets and focuses on a quintet of characterless leads caught up in what should have been a MAD MAX-style maelstrom, yet is in execution a bargain basement sadistic thriller.
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By “Purge”, citizens of the United States get to “release the beast” (said with a straight face more than once). For one night annually, over 12 hours, the New Founding Fathers of America brought in a social program to solve economic and civil unrest through unbridled illegal activity. Insider trading, packing a year’s worth of recreational drug taking into half a day, parking where you shouldn’t, littering, are not of interest to the filmmakers. People getting shredded by gunfire, or being set on fire by a flamethrower wielding psychopath somehow riding a beach buggy in a subway tunnel, are the order of the night.
THE RUNNING MAN/BATTLE ROYALE/THE HUNGER GAMES depicting state sponsored societal gladiatorial cleansing has done it better. While ostensibly condemning violence, THE PURGE: ANARCHY revels in it. Flinging supposed satirical barbs at the screen, writer-director James DeMonaco offers little in the way of brains or political commentary. Glimpsed references to healthcare struggles, banking deregulation, wealth sans morality, are criminally squandered for perfunctory dialogue stating the obvious about a-particular-character’s-clear-as-day-predicament-at-a-given-moment. THE WARRIORS this ain’t.
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Frank Grillo’s Leo is the only player approaching charisma, but his arc is so obvious that within two minutes of meeting him you’ll know exactly how it unfurls.
Okay, so we can forget science fiction used as oblique mirror held up to current woes; so what about the carnage, right? After all, when you have effectively a continent-sized population given free rein to act out revenge, petty injustices, immoral impulses, arguably disproportionate to grievances suffered, there should have been a typhoon of barbarity. Minor shoot‘em up skirmishes, extremely poorly choreographed, are what is on offer. On fire, a bus streaks past in the background, but inept framing and editing fritter away thrills. Cardboard-looking sets greet the leads on entering buildings. Scenes smack of other, better movies, from CLOVERFIELD and SOUTHERN COMFORT to DUEL and ALIENS.
Dog eat dog, safety net devoid society taken to the nth, in terms of feral animosity, had the potential to be an intelligent thrill ride. See instead the masterful SNOWPIERCER.
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