Review: "The Purge: Election Year"

Despite the title, “The Purge” isn’t an overtly political take in its third outing into a nasty dystopian future where people are allowed to murder and rape each other one night a year to vent their collective spleen.

There is indeed a presidential election going on, with the leading candidate a member of the New Founding Fathers of America, who wants to preserve the Purge as a quasi-religious way for citizens to rid themselves of their sin and wanton urges -- sort of preemptive confession and absolution, but with violence instead of penitence.

Christ spilled his blood for our sins; now let us spill others’ for the ones we haven’t committed yet.

The good candidate who wants to do away with the purge is Charlie Roan, an idealistic young Senator played by Elizabeth Mitchell. Eighteen years ago she was a victim of the Purge, losing her entire family, and now wants to do away with the day of infamy once and for all. She points out that most of those killed are poor and minority, claiming the NFFA is doing it simply to ease the burden on welfare rolls.

There’s definitely a one-percenters-versus-the-rest-of-us vibe to the Founding Fathers, who are uniformly white, old and patriarchal as all get out. If you can’t figure out who’s supposed to be who in this configuration, then a red and blue electoral map towards the end spells it out for us.

Still, this film is about bloody mayhem first, with any sort of coherent political message a distant second… or seventh.

The first “Purge” movie fell more in the horror/psychological thriller camp, as a single family was stalked inside their fortress home. The second and now the third ones are purely cathartic action flicks, with Frank Grillo as Leo, a tough but virtuous cop who gets caught up in the killing frenzy.

I liked the first two movies well enough, different as they were, but “Election Year” grows tedious at times. Like the last one it features a thrown-together group of folks just trying to survive the onslaught, who end up banding together to take down the nefarious leaders of the Purge -- giving them a goodly taste of their own medicine in the process, of course.

Mykelti Williamson plays Joe, owner of a tidy little deli/convenience store who’s determined not to see it go up in flames. He acts as both comic relief and the blue-collar voice of reason, and gets most of the best lines in the movie -- courtesy of writer and director James DeMonaco, the man behind all three movies.

Joe’s employee, a persevering Mexican-American immigrant named Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria), turns out to have some useful skills picked up during the drug wars down in Juarez. He’s also got a friend (Betty Gabriel) who runs a volunteer ambulance on Purge night, but used to be known as a champion nicknamed Little Death on the wrong side.

Edwin Hodge plays Dante Bishop, leader of upstart rebellions who oppose the Purge, but adopt its tactics. And Terry Serpico, who looks like Anthony Michael Hall’s malevolent twin, is chilling as the leader of some white power mercenaries.

“The Purge: Election Year” replicates the experience of the previous movies well enough (especially the last one) without really adding any new layers or expanding this world. There’s some disturbing images cooked up for their own benefit -- purgers dressed up as bloody Abraham Lincoln and Lady Liberty, for instance -- but there’s nowhere left for this series to go.

Video review: "The Purge: Anarchy"

I’m always leery when a low-budget movie becomes a hit and then we see a sequel churned out a year later. The gestation time for most features films is about five years from conception to theatrical release, so most things done in a fraction of that time tend to be hasty and sloppy.

“Crank something out, cash in” is the byword.

“The Purge: Anarchy” bucks this trend by actually being superior to its 2013 predecessor. While the first film was more a schlocky horror film edged with social commentary, the sequel falls into the straight action/thriller category.

If you’ll recall from the last movie, things are set in the dystopian near-future where the United States has been taken over by a group of patriarchal dictators. Once a year they hold the Purge – a single night in which any crime, from assault to murder, is perfectly legal. The idea is for the collective unconscious to jettison itself of all those pent-up negative emotions.

Sounds great – unless you’re one of those who gets pent on.

Frank Grillo, as the unnamed protagonist, is out for some sort of revenge. But when he sees some masked marauders threatening helpless folks, his better instincts take over. Soon he’s defending a whole group of victims from the ultra-rich puppet masters who control the gangs and use the purging to maintain power.

A ludicrous but effective mix of action, scares and 99-percenter outrage, “The Purge: Anarchy” is a catharsis from awful sequels.

Video extras are barely so-so. The DVD comes with a making-of featurettes, “Behind the Anarchy,” including interviews with principle cast and crew. Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack and you add some deleted scenes.

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Review: "The Purge: Anarchy"

Who would you kill?

That's the lure of "The Purge: Anarchy," the sly sequel to the successful low-budget horror film from just last year. As you may recall, the setup is that in a dystopian near-future American, one night a year everyone is allowed to murder, maim and rape without consequence -- the notion being that by "cleansing" ourselves of negative emotions, it makes for a more harmonious republic.

(Unless you're one of the ones being cleansed, of course.)

Personally, I can't say as I've ever had a overwhelming urge to kill another human being. Oh, there was that boss who treated employees like chattel, and anyone who kicks a dog is deserving of a good smacking around, just on general principle.

But blood and death? I don't need that in my dreams. And maybe I'm naive, but I don't think the vast majority of other people would, either.

So writer/director James DeMonaco, who also helmed the first film, starts off with a premise that is pretty whack. But like a flowering plant that is garish and goofy on the surface, sometimes there are roots that go down further than you'd expect. And that's the case with "Anarchy."

Abandoning most of the horror film tropes of the original flick, the sequel falls more into thriller/drama territory. There are a lot of shoot-em-ups and grisly scenes of mayhem. But the meat of the story is one of revenge and redemption, with a strong message about the rich preying on the weak.

As the Commencement, as it's called by the New Founding Fathers of America, approaches for the year 2023, a backlash has started to rise. There's an Internet prophet (Michael K. Williams) railing against the system, claiming the wealthy and powerful are using the purge to weed out the poor and weak.

It's also notable that most of the purgers are white, while the bulk of their victims are brown people.

"Change will come when their blood spills!" urges the leader of the 99 percenters.

Most people, though, are just scared and prefer to wait things out behind barricaded doors.

But not our never-named protagonist. Played by Frank Grillo, a recognizable actor who often portrays heavies and second fiddles, our man has apparently been planning for the purge for a long time. He's got an arsenal of guns, an armored car and a sour attitude. He's out to get someone, though the reasons remain hazy.

Then he comes across Eva (Carmen Ejoga) and Cali (Zoe Soul), a mother and daughter who have been torn from their apartment by a squad of militaristic goons. He stops to save them, and before long they've added a yuppie couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) to the mix, and he's saddled with a whole troupe of innocents to look after.

The group wends its way through downtown Los Angeles, getting into all sorts of bizarre scrapes and encounters with gangs in fright masks and whatnot. (The creepiest antagonists roam around in a semi-tractor trailer; the ominous Big Daddy is their leader.) It's reminiscent of "The Warriors," another ludicrous-yet-evocative glimpse of a chaotic future where roving bands of bloodthirsty tribes seek each other out for pointless exchanges of brutality.

Some sequences are just rote action -- typical machine gun fire and sweaty urgency. Others drive home the us-versus-them theme with delicious panache. A real fist-pumping turn of events is when the friendlies are captured and auctioned off to super-rich purgers, but then they flip the script.

"The Purge: Anarchy" is one of those movies that seems really silly at first. And it is. But it's also got some disturbing things to say.

Review: "The Purge"

"The Purge" is a pretty dumb movie, but it goes about its business in a fashion that is not without intelligence and skill. It starts out with an allegorical premise, about a dystopian America where people are legally allowed to kill each other one night a year. But then it dives into familiar action/horror movie tropes while the audience spends the last half yelling at the people onscreen not to behave like total ijits.

Personally, I think writer/director James DeMonaco should've taken a more intellectual and dramatic approach, something like "Gattaca," which also happened to star Ethan Hawke (a frequent collaborator of DeMonaco's). This movie instead opts for boo-gotcha scares and fist-pumping takedowns of bad guys -- but at least it embraces this dumbed-down role instead of trying for a wishy-washy hybrid.

It's the year 2022, and the U.S. has been taken over by a political leadership that calls itself the New Founding Fathers. Their ethos is very heavy on religiosity, but it's more of an Old Testament version with lots of smiting and wrathful vengeance.

One night a year for 12 hours, all laws and public protection are suspended, and people are free to kill, maim and otherwise inflict their pent-up savagery on each other, without consequence. The idea is that while they talk a lot about God, the populace also recognizes its inner demons. Instead of confession, they let their sins out for one wanton night of orgiastic purging.

Most people barricade themselves in their homes and watch the action on television. James Sandin (Hawke) understands this, and makes a very nice living selling high-end security systems to wealthy types like himself. Wife Mary (Lena Headey) is also onboard, though their children are uncomfortable with the reasoning behind the mayhem.

Zoey (Adelaide Kane) is a pouty teen made poutier by the fact her dad disapproves of her older boyfriend (Tony Oller). Charlie (Max Burkholder) is morose and brainy, building a roving surveillance robot out of old toys that will come in handy later.

The Sandins are settling in for a comfortable night behind the protection of their steel-shielded doors when a homeless African-American man (Edwin Hodge) comes begging for mercy from the band of purgers chasing him. Soft-hearted Charlie shuts down the security and lets him in, and a brooding standoff ensues with his pursuers.

The purge crew is not the usual movie collection of illiterate rednecks, but well-heeled prep school types who see chasing down the dregs of society as not just their right, but a civic duty. They wear sinister Guy Fawkes masks, except for their charismatic leader (an excellent Rhys Wakefield), whose patriotic/pious fervor burns luridly brighter.

There are a lot of potential intriguing jumping-off points here, from the rich-vs.-poor underbelly of the purge system to the racial overtones that remain largely unspoken -- and I mean that literally; the black guy seeking sanctuary utters a total of about a dozen words.

But DeMonaco elbows these notions aside in favor of obvious but effective scare tactics. "The Purge" has an eerie claustrophobic feel, underlined by the director's tendency to keep his camera right up in people's faces. I lost count of the number of times somebody was about to die, their would-be killer leering over them with a gun or blade, and at the last second something intervenes.

There's a better movie to be made using this concept, but the one they did make isn't awful.