August 15, 2018
Written by: James DeMonaco
Starring: Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Kiele Sanchez
Budget: $9,000,000
Quotes: "The unwritten Purge rule: don't save lives. Tonight we take lives. We make things manageable. Unfortunately the citizens aren't killing enough. So we supplement it all to keep things balanced. It's important work the NFFA does and we can't have any interference. We can't have heroes... oh no sir... no heroes."
Trivia: Edwin Hodge plays Dante Bishop, the homeless man in the original The Purge (2013) that the son lets in. He is also in this movie as the same character and he saves the group at the Wealthy People's Party. He is part of the group that try to defend the less wealthy people.
Until a few weeks ago, I had never seen any of the Purge movies. I liked the premise, but just had never gotten around to watching it. When I finally watched the first Purge, I was a little disappointed with it. The premise seemed hamstrung by the setting taking place entirely within a house. It seemed no different than The Strangers and/or Panic Room. Just another home invasion movie. That's why I was excited to watch the second film. I was hoping for a movie closer to Escape From New York. The Purge: Anarchy follows a few characters that come together in the city streets and as the title suggest, it has a more anarchic feel to it than the first one. The film also has some strong social and political messages that I wasn't expecting.
The film begins a couple hours before the purge is set to begin and follows the stories of a mother and daughter (Eva and Cali) who hope to remain safe inside their apartment with their dying father and a couple named Shane and Liz whose car breaks down near downtown minutes before the purge is set to begin. Both storylines will later intertwine when they meet the fifth main character, a guy called Sergeant who is hellbent on committing revenge across town.
As the purge is about to begin, Eva and Cali's father sneaks out to be the purge sacrifice for a rich family in exchange for $100,000 for his family. The idea that the rich can purge from the safety of their homes while the poor are killed for fun is an ongoing theme in the films. It also demonstrates the bad faith in which the rich are allowed to purge their desires. It is the poor who suffer. After Eva and Cali find out, one of their neighbors breaks into the building while the building is being surrounded by a heavily armed mercenary squad. The neighbor tries to rape the two women, but luckily he is killed by one of the mercenaries before this can happen. Eva and Cali are forced to flee the building while the armed mercenaries kill all their fellow inhabitants. Who exactly are the mercenaries confuses the characters but will be a major element of the film's theme
Eventually the women meet Sergeant who saves them from a psycho with a machine gun in the back of a moving truck. He also finds Shane and Liz and the five make their way to one of Eva's friends houses where she says there is a car Sergeant can use to get across town to met out his revenge. This is when the movie gets really good. This is when it turns into Escape from New York. A group of twenty somethings in masks seem to be following the group and really getting into the purge spirit by beating and kidnapping anyone they come across. There is also a great scene where Shane, who we quickly learn is a complete dumb dumb, steps into what is obviously a trap. Luckily Sergeant is there to save the day again.
After finally getting to their friend's house there is a very awkward and tense dinner where the friend and her friends seem to have been hitting the wine bottle pretty hard. One friend kills the other because she finds out that she had been sleeping with her husband. Then there is a great car chase where Liz and Shane finally pull their weight and shoot out a couple of baddies. Shane of course gets shot, because he is dumb. Alright, I know I have been ragging on Shane a bit, but here's why. He spends the entire movie complaining about Sergeant and how he can't be trusted and always wanting to leave meanwhile he gets saved by Sergeant over and over again. How about a little Gratitude? Oh, and Cali is really obnoxious constantly arguing with Sergeant and calling him an asshole. She plays a seventeen year old who looks like she is thirty. It wasn't until half way through the movie before I realized oh, she's Eva's daughter not her sister. Anyways, these people should be grateful. Sergeant has done nothing but go out of his way to help them putting himself at risk and delaying his revenge.
The group is finally picked up by the masked twenty somethings. The leader is played by Lakieth Stanfield (he's Erm's friend on Atlanta and he was in Get Out and he seems to be on just about everything now), and he lets them know that he isn't purging but is hired to kidnap people during the purge for the rich. The five are sold to a woman who puts them up for bidding. Rich people get to bid on the chance to hunt and kill them in a battleground that they created for their amusement. Sergeant kills most of them and then The Bloody Stranger from the first movie comes in along with his rebel group lead by a guy named Carmelo. They rightly believe that the purge is simply class war. A tool of the rich to wipe out the poor dredges that they see plaguing their cities.
Later in the film we get a confession from the maniac that had the machine gun in the moving truck. His nickname is Big Daddy and he is a government employee along with the armed mercenaries. They target entire project buildings during the purge to kill the poor families inside. The government feels that the people are not doing an efficient enough job purging so the government has taken it upon itself to help eliminate the poor.
The action in this film is much more intense than the first movie since the realm that the characters exist is so much bigger. Traps, roving gangs, a psychotic government, and your every day purgers are around every corner. The car chase is one scene that makes the film particularly intense. The gang wields a flame thrower that is uses to burn the homeless people that are hiding in the depths under a bridge. Once again, the poorest sections of society are the ones most affected by the Purge. Although later we see the hung dead body of a corrupt stockbroker who stole someone's pension. So, even the wealthy aren't immune to the purge.
I love the film's message and its analysis of the purge. The purge is a tool to eliminate poverty by eliminating the impoverished. And when the people are not meeting expectations the government takes it upon itself to annihilate the undesirables. It is a very dark and cynical view of how the wealthy see the "other half." It is also hard to disagree with the film's analysis. There are far too many government policies that target the poorest sections of society. Vagrancy laws and the stigma of prison time served are just two glaring examples.
The film is dark, violent, but leaves the viewer with some hope. Sergeant ends up not killing the person he set out to commit revenge against (although no one would have blamed him for it). Also, Carmelo, the Bloody Stranger, and their comrades are out fighting against the hypocrisy of the purge. Although the rich are still protected during the purge, still can kill for fun from an area of safety and still are allowed to exploit and treat the poor like they are their sadistic colonizers, Carmelo and his friends show that people can only be pushed so far before they start pushing back. Down with The New Founding Fathers. Viva la resistance!
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