The Purge

Not been to the cinema for some time so this week decided I had to make that change.  There's not much on at the minute after all the cinemas local to Wokingham pulled Byzantium off their screens at the end of last week.  That's only 1 week that film was available to see around here, now replaced by endless showings of Fast and Furious 6 and After Earth.  Sigh.

Thankfully though there are still some slightly interesting films out there at the moment, one of which is The Purge.  Starring Ethan Hawke and directed by the same guy who did Sinister I did not have too much in the way of hopes when I first saw trailers for The Purge.  The film has a neat high concept, which is that in order to maintain order in an increasingly violent world, the US government has created a Purge.  The Purge is a single night of the year when all crime is legal, the emergency services are closed down and the population are free to go out, murder, rob, rape and pillage and 'get everything out of their system'.  An interesting idea, one which the film feels the need to explain several times in the opening act.  The film also poses a number of questions about the true motivations behind the existence of The Purge - several news commentators are shown discussing if it is in fact simply an elaborate ploy to kill off society's poor - but none of this is really expanded on in the rest of the film.

We are invited to spend the night of The Purge with the Sandin family, a perfect example of the white upper middle class suburban idyll.  Father James (Ethan Hawke) has made Billions selling home security systems to guard against the Purge, Mother Mary (Lena Headey - about whom I constantly have to pretend to my friends that I don't know if she's going to be needed to reprise her character in each subsequent season of Game of Thrones) is the housewife doting over two stereotypical middle class brat kids.  We see that their neighbours are a little miffed at all the money the Sandins have, since they earned it my flogging security systems to everyone on the street.  But everyone beds down for The Purge and soon the fun begins, as young Charlie Sandin lets a random man from the street into their house and soon a large gang of frat boys are banging on their door demanding their 'right' to Purge.

The film leaves behind its overt politicisation and turns into a sort of Straw Dogs type thing in which the Sandin family have to defend their home from the frat boys and frat girls wielding various types of weaponry.  It gets a bit tedious when people start creeping around the house in the dark, but then it goes rather fun and icky when Ethan Hawke finally gets to go to work with a shotgun and an axe in his pool room.

I think that the film might be trying to have a political angle, but it isn't that clear if it's pro or anti gun.  A friend of mine observed that The Purge probably has a good film lurking inside it somewhere, and likely just needed a few re-writes to tighten the story up and make it a really good film.  It certainly ends on a pro-peace note, but I'm not really sure how it can claim that after the amount of violence it gets though.  Anyway, it's daft in places, a little boring in others, but it has enough mental violence in it and an interesting enough concept to make it worth while.  Worth checking out if you get the chance.