Looking At: The Purge: Anarchy

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The Great Purge

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The wealthy have their own way of Purging.

I didn't watch the original The Purge, and apparently that's probably for the best. I liked the idea of it, take the basic de-construction of a zombie movie, and remove the zombies. Let's face it, deep down inside all mankind is inherently evil. Given the opportunity, we'd all probably go crazy and give in to our most feral desires.

 That's sort of the world that The Purge sets up. It takes place in the near future, about twenty years from now, where the US government has been replaced by a group calling themselves The New Founding Fathers. Crime rates are down, unemployment is at an all time low, and every year the number of citizens living below the poverty line goes down. Everything is hunky dory, and it's all thanks to the Purge.

The idea is that all a country needs to run is a release. Every year, from 7pm March 21 to 7am March 22 every crime in America is legal and all emergency services are shut down. Citizens are free to do whatever they want, as long as it ends when The Purge does. I dig this idea, since it's similar to one of my favorite comic series The Crossed, and the idea of stripping mankind down to it's most primal core is an interesting one we don't see played around with much.

My understanding is that the first film was something of a disappointment, failing to do anything with this concept. According to Wikipedia it's about a well-to-do white family protecting a black person against people during The Purge. I can see why it wasn't well received, as that sounds terrible. Why spend the time to create a concept that so big, then set the movie with that concept in one location?

God's Not Dead

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God, the villain. Not a metaphor, the film's not smart enough for that.

Thankfully the original was successful, and so now we have a sequel in The Purge: Anarchy. It's a great sequel, taking the concept of the original and blowing it up to where it should be. If it wasn't for some second rate acting, shaky camera work, and an overly boring plot it could've been a modern horror classic.

Then again, Anarchy isn't a horror. This time around character's aren't staying put, and the movie is more or less a collection of events in a linear fashion, only tangentially connected. The plot, as much as there is one, is that a small group of innocent people are following some super soldier to safety as he navigates The Purge to carry out his own act of cleansing.

That's really it. We get about twenty minutes of setting up the characters before The Purge actually starts. There's Eva (Carmen Ejogo), a mother struggling to get by; her daughter Cali [sic](Zoe Soul) who's annoying as fuck; and Shane and Liz (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez), a couple going through some marital issues. For one reason or another they all find themselves caught in the middle of the sixth annual Purge, and chased down by a private military force and a gang of bikers lead by a man named God.

By coincidence everyone gets saved by an unnamed man identified as Sergeant (Frank Grillo). He's armed to the teeth and on his way to do some killing of his own when he stops to be a hero, accidentally getting caught up in saving everyone's lives, all while just trying to get rid of them. It's clear from the get-go that he's better prepared then the average Purger, and watching him just go to town on people is fun and likely the best part of the movie.

God Bless the US

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From left to right: Whiney, Useless, Angry Ethnic, Frank Grillo, Moose-Face

What's better then The Purge's second rate story and dialogue is it's world and concept. The Purge is a deeply flawed idea, and for some reason the only crime the movie actually focuses on is murder. But even the film seems to acknowledge this, and there are hints at a bigger world then the one shown in the films.

Anarchy at least lets us see what America during The Purge actually looks like, and at it's best it's a sort of Alice in Wonderland style trip through a Purge. We see what people become, and see the various factions the spring up. There are roving gangs of killers, snipers, crazy religious people, the works. It's strongly implied that Purging has become something of a religious experience for some people, with the wealthy buying their victims and saying a prayer to the government before killing. There are even people that see how stupid The Purge is, and what's it's true purpose may or may not be. It's a world aware of itself, just barely smart enough to make sense without thinking to much.

It's to bad then that once again the film fails to truly deliver on this. Like I mentioned, there are a lot of problems with Anarchy. For starters, the camera work is varying degrees of terrible. Occasionally it catches a good shot, but so much of the film is made up of poorly handled shaky cam that it becomes annoying and distracting, especially during some of the more close-quarters fights.

Secondly, the actual plot is boring. There's almost nothing in the way of plot development, and it's really only there to carry the people along to their next location. Worse the characters are all one dimensional and like the plot go absolutely no where. Frank Grillo is probably the best, just because his character doesn't whine or complain, and seems ready to face what everyone knew was coming anyway.

The Purge feels like it should've been a different movie. As a Grindhouse style flick, this could've been an ok movie. All the elements are there: Gangs of psychos, an army of shady mercenaries tonnes of violence, hell, at the beginning, the hero even has a tricked out car. But instead we get this, some sort of neo-modern horror action film that doesn't know what it wants to be. There's a good movie in The Purge, we just have yet to see it.