In a time when some politicians now kick off their campaigns in
gun shops, armed yokels wave the Confederate flag outside the White House, a
candidate in the South hosts target practice with President Obama’s face for a
bull’s eye, a movie like “The Purge: Anarchy” must seem a gift from God to
members of the NRA. Although a dystopian commentary on contemporary trends, the
way we live now, the picture, sadly, may inspire more of those massacres that
routinely stain the image of America around the world.
All those people who constantly mutter about the government
“taking away our guns” should delight in the premise of the new picture, which
closely resembles its predecessor. In the year 2023, a pious right-wing party,
the New Founding Fathers, controls the country; their policies result in
drastically lower levels of unemployment, poverty, and crime: what’s not to
like? The single cause of those decreases is the Purge, an annual night of
cathartic violence, accompanied by prayer, permitting the citizens to commit
any crimes, including murder, without fear of punishment.
In combining three separate stories into one narrative, the
new “Purge” adds some greater depth and dimension to the original concept. One
family, Eva (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter Cali (Zoe
Soul), falls into the hands of a uniformed, apparently official group that
travels in semi-trailers, armed with cannons and machine guns, annihilating
anyone they encounter; the second, a young married couple, played by Zach
Gilford and Kiele Sanchez, flee a gang of
motorcyclists wearing frightening masks. More or less accidentally, a single,
well-armed individual called Sarge (Frank Grillo) bent on his own particular revenge, rescues the
others and unites them under his leadership.
The plot settles into a familiar perilous journey through the
deserted streets of an unnamed city. Sarge and his
companions, stalked relentlessly by the bikers, the uniformed groups, and
random individuals, encounter and escape a number of dangerous situations,
including a shocking slaughter within the home of a hospitable family who
initially save the desperate group; the incident, rising out of sibling anger
and jealousy, indicates that the Purge encourages powerful emotions to explode
into killing, a logical extension of the familiar subject of domestic violence.
Throughout the action the picture suggests further meanings to the Purge, involving some unpleasant facts about
social and economic class. Poverty and unemployment drop because the legal
killers, apparently assisted by the government, choose their targets among the
poor, while the wealthy, locked behind their secure defenses, pay a dying man
for the privilege of killing him, after uttering the special prayer of course,
in the safety of their own homes. In a posh banquet hall elegantly dressed men
and women bid for the privilege of hunting down a group of captured victims
with an array of high-class weaponry…
Despite its almost rhythmic series of dangerous encounters,
shootouts, and narrow escapes, the script indulges in some of the stock material
of any Hollywood thriller. Its conclusion combines a couple of significant
revelations with a hint of sentimental acceptance and closure. The final shocks
may actually surprise more than the events that constitute the major substance
of the picture.
Though stretching plausibility quite a bit, the initial
concept, which I think first appeared in an episode of the original “Star Trek”
series, follows a reasonably credible line of extrapolation. The numerous
instances of massacres, which now enjoy their own genres — mall shootings,
school shootings, workplace shootings, college shootings, etc. — certainly provide
a reasonable basis for the picture. The
contemporary obsession with firearms and gun rights — every boy should have his
own bazooka — along with the incessant frenzy of hatred whipped up by
right-wing commentators, the tragic paradox of a blatant and even permitted
racism motivated by the election of Barack Obama, create a perfectly
understandable contest for the otherwise exaggerated subject of “The Purge.”
The initial movie earned 10 times its cost at the box office,
an obvious motive for a sequel; another addition to the series probably will
follow. And why not? We all need our weapons to fight off whatever enemy we
think is out there, especially the government, which wants to take away our
guns. Lock and load, citizens, they’re after you.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2014.
