Movie Review: THE PURGE: ANARCHY

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The annual Purge: for a 12-hour period all crime is legal.  It’s a means of having the American public exhaust all negative energy in one night in order to lower crime rates for the rest of the year.  The only laws active during this period is that all high ranking government officials remain unharmed and that no weapon above a class 4 (i.e. explosives) are prohibited.

The Purge is such a great concept; writer/director James DeMonaco doesn’t know what to do with it.  So many times during the first movie, and in the new Purge: Anarchy, I had ideas swirling around and questions that I wanted to answer.  As a writer I find it impossible to grasp the concept of being a GOOD idea to take someone’s “baby” away from them and do something different with it, but that’s exactly what should happen.  As the first film suffered from being too narrow in scope for the magnitude of the concept, Anarchy opens up the story and spreads itself too thin, both films full of characters as bland as they come when all of the interesting people are off doing the unseen.

In the first ten minutes we’re introduced to three separate storylines – Sergeant (Frank Grillo) is preparing to Purge someone who ruined his family, Shane and Liz (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) are a married couple on the verge of divorce, and Eva and Cali (Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul) are a mother and daughter caught on hard times.  In an act of fate, all three of them collide on the night of the Purge and Sergeant has little choice but to attempt to protect these people from the madness that’s occurring.

There are a few great things about this sequel, the first and most prominent being Frank Grillo who’s playing a very thinly veiled version of Marvel’s Punisher, Frank Castle.  Grillo’s such a great character actor, turning every role he touches, no matter the size, into someone interesting just by the creative choices he makes.  His presence on screen is so great that it’s a mystery it took this long for him to finally snag a lead role.  I also really enjoyed the warm-up, seeing all these seemingly normal people preparing to become monsters for 12-hours a year.  The bad part is that’s all we really see of them, and then it’s another hour until the movie finally starts to have fun.  The final 20 minutes are really good, and it’s all the more insulting that the bulk of the movie is filled with bland characters being helpless while Grillo tries his best to act like he gives a shit.  The direction of the film is muddled with a heavy hand, taking his own murky writing skills and bringing nothing to the table.  Camera work is pedestrian at best, and minus some good use of slow motion when introducing the Purgers as they prepare and set out on their crime sprees, there’s virtually no real style to the filmmaking that sets it apart from others in the genre.

Where is the horror and terror of this night?  Nowhere to be found, that’s where.  The biggest problem is that what everyone wants to see during the Purge is the psychos purging, not the innocent people who want no part of it.  Whether it’s an unlikable family in the first film protecting a stranger because why not, or a moralistic mother and daughter nagging their savior to be a good person in this one, it’s BORING.  It’s obvious that Universal wants to turn The Purge into a franchise, and perhaps they’ll actually get it right one of these times by actually focusing on the people who decide to murder rather than those who don’t.  As is the concept remains truly untapped, and while Anarchy shows some signs of brightness in the set up and conclusion, it’s still just about as limited in scope as the first film.  If it weren’t for Grillo’s performance, it’d be a complete waste; give him a better film to lead and he’ll own it.  This one is a rental at best.

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