Review: The Purge

By Joe Moss

★½

In the not so distant future (2022), the American government allows its population to have a night of free for all killing to usher in the NEW American ideal of peace and prosperity. Employment rates are up, crime is down. Here lies the premise for James DeMonaco’s sophomore directorial “The Purge.” The movie runs like an Americanized retrograde version of “Battle Royale” (2000) directed by Kinji Fukasaku who helped direct the Janpanese sequences in the classic “Tora, Tora, Tora” (1970). This movie places 9^th grade students onto an island and the battle ensues until only 1 survives—similar to another hit film/book series of late, “The Hunger Games” (2012).

“The Purge” stars Ethan Hawke (as James Sandin) a security system salesman who is at the top of his game—when it comes to selling high tech security for the wealthy… And so stops the plot development for the remainder of the film. Sure, the story (also written by DeMonaco) attempts to add in small tidbits of information such as “only a few short years ago we couldn’t pay bills, and now we are looking to buy a boat [said by Sandon to his wife, Mary (Lena Headey)]” but these comments come off trite considering the opulence in which they reside. Headey’s character seems to float through life on this effervescent cloud of ignorance. While her son is obviously a social outcast and her daughter is on the verge of teenage hormone overindulgence. Still, these are all cliché plot nuances that are as evident as grass being green and the sky being blue. DeMonaco is much more talented a writer as was evident in “The Negotiator” (1998) and even “Assault on Precinct 13” (2005).

             I had the distinct impression throughout the entire movie this was another Hollywood attempt to squeeze the remaining dollars out of the American public on the heels of success of “Hunger Games…” as well as a poor attempt to prime the waters for the November release of “Catching Fire.” There was not a single item in the movie that was surprising. Sure, there were great suspenseful moments that made the film easy to watch, but there was no new substance/plot/intrigue as in the aforementioned films from which this film obviously takes root. As a scientist and teacher, I can even appreciate the attempt of Demonaco to offer some modern day substance to Alfred Adler's ideas on psychology and the inferiority complex, as well as play on A.R. Wallace's and Darwin's evolutionary ideals of "survival of the fittest."  Thus, I did not have a problem sitting through the film, as it was only an 85 minute run time—thankful editing by Peter Gvosdas (of "The Avengers" (2012) and "Captain America" (2011) editing teams)—but much longer and the rating would have been lower.

Review: The Purge

by Trevor Kirkendall
zero stars

Its 2022, only nine years from today. Unemployment is down to an astonishing 1%. Crime has nearly vanished. All this thanks to something known as The Purge. One night a year for twelve hours, all emergency services are suspended and all crime – including murder – is legal. The Purge helps to cleanse and purify Americans. No one feels the need to commit any crimes since its legal once a year for an entire night. Its never really explained how the unemployment is affected by this. I guess because the next day, hundreds if not thousands of people are probably needed to clean up the mess from the night before.

All this is made possible by a new political party called the New Founding Fathers, who in the not too distant future will be elected into all wings of our government and will concoct this asinine idea in an attempt to restore America’s greatness in the world.

Those who can afford to lock themselves in their homes at night do so every year and ride out The Purge. Those who can’t end up being Purge victims. Those opposed to The Purge say that this is nothing more than a government controlled mechanism to weed out and exterminate the poor and those who do not contribute to society. Sound like familiar banter on all of today’s cable news networks?

Ethan Hawke plays James Sandin and he sells those high priced security systems. He lives in a gated community with the rest of the smiling and happy Stepford families. He’s made a fortune off of these security systems. All his work for the year comes down to tonight, for its time for The Purge. He had his wife Mary (Lena Headey) are locking everything down for the night with their two kids Zoey (Adelaide Kane) and Charlie (Max Burkholder).

Shortly after lockdown, Charlie sees a bloody stranger (Edwin Hodge) running through the neighborhood streets crying for help. Feeling sympathetic – and downright stupid – he disarms the system and lets him inside. During the subsequent confusion after he’s entered, he disappears into the house. It is, after all, a gigantic house and he’s hard to locate. Remember, the Sandin’s are ‘haves’ and therefore can afford a massive security system on their massive house.

It doesn’t take too long for a group of people to show up at their house looking for this man. He’s their target for tonight’s Purge and they want him back. The group is lead by a really handsome young man who looks like he stepped out of an Ivy League yacht club (Rhys Wakefield). He’s even got the long blonde hair, the plaid tie and the prep school jacket complete with the school’s seal on it. It could not be anymore embarrassingly contrived than that.

Written and directed by James DeMonaco (who also wrote Francis Ford Coppola’s 1996 stinker “Jack”), “The Purge” is nothing more than a massive delusion and dream of how he thinks the world should probably work in order for America to regain its standing within the world.

The argument can be made that this is merely a satire on our current social and political state. Anyone who flips on the TV today can tell there’s a rift in our social landscape between those who have and those who don’t have. Unemployment is at a consistently high number that contributes to the escalation of crime in many areas. The role of how of guns in our society has been repeatedly called into question over the past year.

The whole presence of the New Founding Fathers political party in this movie leads us to believe that a new political stronghold will rise up amongst the voters soon. Once in Washington, they will use their power to legislate this perverse idea. Draw your own conclusions as to which party you think DeMonaco is trying to implicate with this analogy.

The fact is, DeMonaco has not provided any kind of social satire on our current state, which is what he was clearly attempting. He’s taken a very shallow look at the issues of today and has come up with this sick view of what’s to come. A satire should mock the situation and maybe provide some kind of alternative solution. Not “The Purge.” No, what we have here is DeMonaco’s disgusting fantasy of something he’d like to see play out in his lifetime.

It’s almost as bad as the so-called ‘torture porn’ films that saturated the film market in the early-to-mid-2000’s. Films like “Hostel” and “Saw” and later taking it to the extreme with “The Human Centipede.” These are films that severed absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to showcase the depraved nature of their filmmakers’ deepest and darkest fantasies.

If you can’t torture someone for real, then why not make a movie about it so you can live out your dream? Not to worry, Hollywood is full of twisted people who are just willing to line up and make it happen. Especially if you’re trying to make some kind of commentary that continues to deepen the societal rift between the haves and the have-nots.

While “The Purge” doesn’t really come off as a horror movie in the likes of “Hostel” and “Saw” which showed the physical torture of a person, it does come across as a thriller meaning to show the emotional torture one family has to endure. Their torture is not carried out by those who are personally standing at their front door with guns and knives, but by the very government that allowed this to happen. It’s pretty damn offensive.