The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
Directed by James DeMonaco
One night per year, the government sanctions a 12-hour period in which citizens can commit any crime they wish -- including murder -- without fear of punishment or imprisonment. Leo, a sergeant who lost his son, plans a vigilante mission of revenge during the mayhem. However, instead of a death-dealing avenger, he becomes the unexpected protector of four innocent strangers who desperately need his help if they are to survive the night.
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As the motley, bickering quintet traverses the dark and deadly streets, trying to survive against ridiculous odds, some old-school synth music helps create a brooding B-movie vibe reminiscent of The Warriors and Escape From New York, but unfortunately it doesn’t last long.
That might remind some viewers of similar films such as Walter Hill's "The Warriors" where a small group of characters must make their way across a city at night and avoid or fight off those who wish to do them harm.
Writer/director DeMonaco returns to the series with the burden of exposition already eliminated, allowing him to treat downtown L.A. as a cruel playground where every intersection brings with it the promise of a new threat: Sergeant and company run afoul of white-collar poachers, territorial snipers, and mask-wearing gangs, who bring to mind The Warriors.
By adding a variety of bad guys here, DeMonaco gives The Purge: Anarchy a bit of The Punisher meets The Warriors vibe, which is something I instantaneously fell in love with.
In fact, we'd advise against it because The Purge: Anarchy stands firm on its own two feet and has more in common with classics like The Warriors (including an auditory homage to the classic Barry De Vorzon score during a key chase sequence) and Escape From New York than it does with the Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey starring snoozer.
Now The Purge: Anarchy employs the same concept as wallpaper for an action-thriller that swipes alternately from The Warriors and Escape from New York but lacks the style of either.
The first picture (which starred Ethan Hawke, notably absent here) showed us an upscale home invasion, the new “Anarchy” tries for a “Warriors”/“Escape From New York” vibe as it follows five people trapped in the streets.
In fact, we'd advise against it because The Purge: Anarchy stands firm on its own two feet and has more in common with classics like The Warriors (including an auditory homage to the classic Barry De Vorzon score during a key chase sequence) and Escape From New York than it does with the Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey starring snoozer.
A significant number of them will also die, but only after running themelves ragged, Escape From New York-style, through downtown war zones, led by a stoic, vendetta-minded tough guy (Frank Grillo, getting it just right, like he's in training for the Surliness Olympics).
Now The Purge: Anarchy employs the same concept as wallpaper for an action-thriller that swipes alternately from The Warriors and Escape from New York but lacks the style of either.
It's still not a great movie, but its drive-in aesthetics recall such films as "Escape From New York," "The Most Dangerous Game" elements of the first film magnified in a climactic bit of satire that's a memorable set piece.
If the first Purge played like a variation on Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, the second episode (directed by the writer of the tolerable 2005 remake of that siege film) comes across like a tribute to the Carpenter’s Escape from New York.
And his third-act nod to The Most Dangerous Game is amusing in spots.
This time around, DeMonaco, who wrote both “Purge” movies and has once again secured a first-rate cast, ups the ante on the one-percenters versus the poor theme by staging a replay of the classic “The Most Dangerous Game,” with the super-rich as hunters and the mob as hunted.
It's still not a great movie, but its drive-in aesthetics recall such films as "Escape From New York," "The Most Dangerous Game" elements of the first film magnified in a climactic bit of satire that's a memorable set piece.
Despite being like an open-invitation “Hunger Games” or modern, legal, domestic update of “The Most Dangerous Game,” the “Purge” franchise retains some suspense and thrives on Grillo’s sturdy resolve.
In what quickly begins to resemble a new age version of The Running Man, we follow the enigmatic and vengeful Sergeant ( Frank Grillo ) as he dares to head out into the streets during the Purge.
In a strange way, I was reminded of Schwarzenegger's The Running Man and there's a sequence in The Purge: Anarchy that seems designed to pay homage to The Hunger Games .
Instead, The Purge: Anarchy becomes a blend of The Running Man and any wackadoo government conspiracy movie ever made, still refusing to grasp everything The Purge has to offer.
The sequel not only stays out of suburban homes for long periods of time; it refuses to stay anywhere for more than 29 seconds — because if your goal is to make a movie that evokes films like The Warriors, Escape from New York, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Running Man, it only makes sense to keep the story moving at a brisk clip.
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This episode, which tries for a sense of surrealism it never achieves, pales in comparison to the similarly off-the-wall, but far more literal, portrayal of the rich feeding off the poor in Brian Yuzna’s wacky but oddly effective 1989 satire “Society.”
Yet as the plot progresses, the movie surprises us by veering into fascinatingly surrealist territory with shades of the 'rich literally feed off the poor' ending of Brian Yuzna's allegorical shocker Society.
Gone are the days when the political and cultural satire of such drive-in cash grabs as the Roger Corman production “Death Race 2000” (1975) would be appreciated only by connoisseurs, cultists and perhaps a handful of the critics who bothered to review them.
Working once more with cinematographer Jacques Jouffret (who shoots the City of Angels with a grainy, gold-flecked sheen that recalls Paul Haggis’ oddly, indirectly comparable “Crash”), DeMonaco keeps the proceedings at a consistently discomfiting level of tension, even if the film’s arsenal of shocks is as limited as its weaponry is shudderingly diverse.
If the Paul Haggis Best Picture winner Crash were an asteroid that hit Earth, The Purge: Anarchy would be its postapocalypse.
Seemingly borrowed from Bay’s Transformers franchise, the overbearing soundtrack ruins any sense of terror and excitement, while lens flares fill the screen any time the camera moves but an inch.
The writer/director of both films is James DeMonaco, who may for all I know have a shelf full of Noam Chomsky, but one of the executive producers is Transformers perpetrator Michael Bay, whose low-budget horror-flick shingle Platinum Dunes is behind the films.
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Looks like the stage is being set for suicide (which neither Eva nor her forceful daughter Cali (Zoë Soul, "Prisoners") pick up on), but the reality's far worse (think Johnny Depp's little seen film "The Brave").
DeMonaco combines the predicaments of his three parties easily, and if The Purge: Anarchy makes enough money, he's free to build the franchise into something Paranormal Activity-like in proportions.
From that outcome, DeMonaco and his producers (who still include Michael Bay and “Paranormal Activity” enabler Jason Blum) have smartly concluded that the original’s high concept was what drew crowds, and have upped the America-centric social panic in the new film’s script.