It is another year for The Purge and the annual Purge is about to commence.   Five people must band together to survive the night where all crime is legal for 12 hours.   The rich pay for people they can kill in the safety of their own homes or in exclusive clubs where they can hunt people.   Meanwhile, trucks travel the city with armed men.   The story follows a mysterious police sergeant (Frank Grillo) who wants revenge against the man who killed his son, a young couple (Shane and Liz) trying to get out of the city (and the girlfriend wants to break up with him), and a mother (Eva) and daughter (Cali).  Their stories converge when the sergeant decides to save them and guide them to the house of a friend of Eva’s as they are being hunted by a masked gang and one of the semi truck trailers.  

 

THE PURGE: ANARCHY is better than the first PURGE.  The first movie had some interesting ideas before becoming your standard home invasion thriller.   This sequel explores some ideas of what would happen in a big city (Los Angeles) during the annual Purge.   A movement is rising against the purge and a rebel organization (The Anti-Purge movement) is asking the poor to rise up against it.  The poor has to run and hide while the rich (and some of the middle class) find a way to protect themselves.  Could it all be about money and population control?   I could believe that and New World Order conspiracy theorists would concur.  The Roman Empire had gladiator games and this near future dystopia of THE PURGE movies is a world where the rich (and possibly even the government of the New Founding Fathers) is seeking a way to control the population.   It is all about money and keeping the wealth for the one percent.   The semi trailer trucks being sanctioned by powerful people is a chilling idea and it is believable that someone would do it if something like The Purge existed.

 

James DeMonaco manages to make the movie more about something and the things you don’t focus on for long have the most impact as the burning bus traveling down the city streets in the background of one scene.  The sequel also gives glimpses of the ninth annual Purge through traffic cameras and news footage.   I hope the third PURGE film (despite the recent lawsuit launched claiming copyright infringement) explores the annual Purge in more aspects. THE PURGE: ANARCHY rises above the first movie and manages to provide some interesting social commentary with what the first movie should have tackled in the first place.   It is definitely one movie you should check out even if you skipped the first one.

 

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