Ever since the ink dried on Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, Hollywood filmmakers have had a two-pronged theme about the near future that’s as sturdy as houses. First, the veneer that separates the mundane world from absolute anarchy is thinner than tissue paper. Second, in the future, everyone will be a mad-dog killer for fifteen minutes.
It’s these concepts that are explored in James DeMonaco’s (screenwriter for Assault on Precinct 13 and Crash) new sci-fi thriller, The Purge. Starring Ethan Hawke (Sinister, Brooklyn’s Finest) and Lena Headey (Possession, The Brothers Grimm, Game of Thrones), the film’s premise gives us a surprisingly strong springboard for this well worn topic: By 2023, the wise New Founding Fathers of America will institute a once-a-year 12 hour period where all street crimes are legal and all police and fire services are suspended.
Having found a safety valve for such issues as unemployment, homelessness and social bigotry, the good folks of the new USA take one night year out their busy schedules to shoot, maim and murder each other with patriotic glee. Unless you can afford a big-time, state of the art security system that basically transforms your home into a massive panic room. Then you can snuggle up to the 50-inch and watch the festivities in HD.
Hawke’s character James Sandin definitively falls in the second category. As a security system salesman, he’s outfitted everyone in his Mr. Rodgers-like neighborhood with enough steel-shuttered windows and cameras to ride out The Purge like a bad winter storm. Sales are strong and life is good. In fact, the Sandins only problems seem to be an angsty teen daughter (Adelaide Kane) whose pent up desires have nothing to with violence and everything to do with her slightly Too-Old boyfriend (Tony Oller) and a geeky, introvert of a son (Max Burkholder) who likes to play with weird-looking remote control dolls.
When the sirens that signal The Purge come, it seems the Sandins will settle down and make it a Netflix night. And, like always happens in these type of movies, the best laid plans go straight to Hell. To start, Too-Old boyfriend sneaks in the house to have a heart to heart with Dad about his intentions towards his daughter (Note to Too-Old Boyfriends: Don’t confront girlfriend’s dad on a night when murder is legal). Then, Geeky Son, in a fit of unexplained conscience, decides to let in a desperate straggler (played by Edwin Hodge) being chased by masked purgers. This of course leads to the Sandins coming into the cross-hairs of some very nasty patriots looking to fulfill their God-given, constitutional rights to bash someone’s head in.
Frankly speaking, stories like this only tend to work if the crafters either go for the darkly comedic jugular, or raise the on-screen chaos to the “look away” level. The Purge does neither.
To his credit, DeMonaco’s script brings the requisite mayhem and moral dilemmas to bear as the stakes get raised. He also seems to understand that a film like The Purge is only as memorable as its villains, and he gives us two pretty good ones in Rhys Wakefield (the sinisterly well-mannered leader of the purgers) and Arija Barekis (as the Sandins creepy high-strung neighbor). But in the interim, he forgets to have his heroes’ actions and motivations make any sense when compared to their surroundings.
Hawke is decently convincing in the Everyman role he seems to find with regularity, when not starring in films about ten-year-old interrupted love affairs. Headey screams and shouts and unleashes her fury at appropriate moments. But Kane and Burkholder’s characters only seem to exist in the script to make awful, life-threating decisions at the worst times possible. It’s a telling sign when you find yourself wishing that the bad guys win because the good guys are so mind-bendingly stupid.
And while the film wears its moral lessons about race and class on its sleeve, The Purge ultimately fails to put the pedal down on its overall theme about the nature of violence: Is modern civilization deceiving itself about our inner workings, or is there hope for us savages?
As a major budget directorial debut, DeMonaco’s effort isn’t fully embarrassing. He understands momentum and stages his action scenes well. Hawke also shows, again, why he is becoming a go-to guy for these type of “angry dad” parts. All this film needed was a push. Let’s hope when eventual reality of The Purge II comes to pass, someone won’t be afraid to let the juicy chunks hit the floor.
Comments are closed.