Description
from IMDB:
In the
future, a wealthy family is held hostage for harboring the target of a
murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12-hour period in which any and all
crime is legalized.
I think
I'll go ahead and put a blanket SPOILER WARNING at the top here, since a lot of
the problems I have with this get into spoiler territory.
First off,
I'll say that I love the concept of this movie.
The idea of a world where all crime is legal for one night is a pretty
fun idea to play around with.
However, I
have a major issue with the idea behind that concept. The idea is that unemployment rates and crime
rates are down because people can go bonkers 12 hours a year. There's no way it would work out that
way. If people want to
kill/rob/vandalize, they won't wait all year for a 12 hour window to do
it. They'll just do it.
For
example, look at the main invader, known only as The Polite Stranger. He is obviously wealthy, and he mentions that
he and his compatriots are well-educated.
He's also a psychopath. It's
foolish to assume that his bloodlust (and that of his Purge-buddies) will be
sated for an entire year just because he kicked a couple drifters to death one
night. That's not how this works.
As was
depicted, it looks as though the majority of people taking advantage of
"Purge Night" were out there for killing. Which makes sense. Perhaps you're just a normal fella who wants
to pee in public without being fined for it.
You're not going to risk that when there are rich kids with automatic
weapons running around the neighborhood.
Which brings up this issue: those people with the urge to get into some
petty crime for the evening won't be indulging that urge, as they don't want to
be murdered. Those people won't be
purging themselves that evening, which means they'll probably indulge that urge
at some other time and hope they don't get caught.
The deeper
you find yourself digging, the less sense it all makes.
That's not
to say this entire movie was terrible, nonsensical trash. Because it wasn't. There were quite a few really cool
parts. I loved the opening, where we see
the violence of the Purge as shown by surveillance cameras. It gave me context and scope for what was to
come. Even though most of this movie
played out as a home invasion movie, it showed that this was just one incident
among thousands (millions?). It took a
huge idea and pared it down to a single incident, while still giving us a taste
of what the rest of America
My
favorite scene was the nonchalant way the next door neighbor was sharpening his
machete a few hours before the start of the Purge. Big fan of that guy. I really wanted to follow him around for the
evening and see what shenanigans he got himself into.
In the
end, this was a claustrophobic home invasion movie. In a movie with limited characters, a lot
hinges on how I feel about the main characters.
And they were terrible here. The acting
wasn’t bad, but the characters were extremely unlikable and made some awful
decisions. I didn’t like a single one of
them. More than any of my other
complaints, this is really what killed this movie for me.
Not terrible. Not great.
A good concept, but not really anything interesting done with it. It’s worth catching if you don’t have
anything better to do for 80 minutes, but don’t rush out to watch this.
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