Amazingly, the debacle that
was last year’s The Purge managed to get a sequel.
To be fair, one of the things
that I thought when watching the original was that so much more could have been
done with the premise – so here we have more being done with it. But none of it
is the right stuff, and critically none of it is filtered through the stories
of characters anybody should actually care about.
The last film had a Panic
Room-style claustrophobia to it, with a family trapped in their house with
nutcases trying to get in. This one goes the other way, taking its characters
out into the wider world of violence and destruction.
Of course, the exploration of ‘all
crime is legal’ remains extremely limited. Stronger explosives are explicitly
banned, cybercrime and fraud aren’t mentioned, rape is hinted at being
permissible but this kind of film is never going to mention child abuse, and it
seems a little remiss that the decadent parties glimpsed here don’t feature any
drug use whatsoever. Still, if I wondered before why people don’t go around in
huge armoured vehicles with heavy arms, the answer is that they do – even if it’s
only the evil gubmint. Yes, a rather silly anti-authority theme pervades here,
because not only do we see that the government managed to bring in this
ridiculous law, they feel there aren’t enough deaths so send out killing squads
to kill off the more vulnerable and undesirable parts of society – ie
targetting poorer black communities. Sounds like it would inevitably lead to
revolution? Yeah, that’s a given. Though apparently we should believe that the
government here couldn’t possibly have thought that would happen.
Our story follows one badass
ex-cop who is in completely the wrong sort of film and makes attempts at real
social comment seem absurd – but who at least you can get behind. He goes about
this anarchic world kicking the butts of trained SWAT-style units and ‘purging’
lunatics from all walks of life single-handedly, all on a quest for revenge. He’s
fun but doesn’t belong in a film that ought to be trying to get its audience to
feel the would be helpless and vulnerable in this situation. He’s joined by four
others brought together by a dramatic episode involving the nasty gubmint. Two are
random white people who are incredibly annoying, snapping at each other over
their ailing relationship and making stupid noises when they need to be quiet.
The others are a black mother and daughter – the mother is probably the most
sympathetic and believable character, and I can see why she would lie to
protect her daughter, but I couldn’t believe she just got upset about her
husband at the very start of her story until there’s some action, whereupon she
forgot all about him. The daughter, though – oh, she annoyed me so much. She
was supposed to get under the badass guy’s skin by being winsome and innocent
and yet having a child’s instinctive knowledge of what is right. But she was
just incredibly cocky, irritating and stubborn. There were many times in the
film I thought ‘They would just kneecap the other person at this point, to keep
them talking but utterly subdued’. But with her, I actually wished they would.
The plot is a total mess. They
set up so much that goes nowhere. The gubmint plot? Left for the sequel. The
revolution? Left for the sequel. The woman with the loudspeaker and automatic
up on the roof? Disappears. The guys in masks (including a painted fencing
mask, woo!) who turn out to be not killers but facilitators? Peripheral. After
the black characters are forced out of their apartment on the flimsiest of
excuses (the SWAT team could have killed them, but no, some grizzly guy wants
to mow them down personally), our main characters unite. Rather than take the
armoured truck, they set off on foot. We’re told nowhere is safe, yet the
banking district is utterly deserted. They go to an apartment where of course
violence erupts, get everyone in the building killed by drawing the gubmint
there, escape and then get caught and sold to elites who purge in relative
safety. They haven’t met Mr. Badass, though – who takes care of this momentary
dip into the territory of The
Running Man
Badass man is given the chance
to show mercy. Will he? Well, if he does I’m sure some hackneyed, highly
coincidental event will show him that mercy is the best course of action, even
though of course mercy could just has easily have meant the opposite.
Hypothetically, of course, because spoilers are bad. In that sort of scenario,
though, I’m sure the ER of a city hospital would be totally empty after a night
of murders and attempted murders, and you’d be able to drive right up to its
door.
This film broached several
more interesting avenues of thought connected to its ridiculous premise...but
didn’t do a good job on any of it, made that premise more ridiculous still, and
did it with incredibly annoying characters. Very bad.
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