The trouble with “The Purge,” director James DeMonaco’s dystopian 2013 thriller, was that it started off with a genuinely scary premise -- in the near future, America is once a year plunged into a government-enforced 12-hour period called the Purge, during which all crime including murder is legal -- and for the following 90 minutes proceeded to flush it down the crapper. Restricting the action to a single location, that location being a locked-down suburban home under attack from masked Purgers, DeMonaco wasted pretty much all the potential of that great premise on what was ultimately the most boringly generic home invasion horror imaginable -- here you have a concept that results in widespread panic and carnage across the entirety of America, and yet here we are, stuck between four walls. It’s no coincidence that the opening titles, in which we’re presented with CCTV footage showing all the anarchic chaos going on outside, are the most interesting and entertaining part of the film -- given the premise, that’s the kind of film you’d expect, not a suburban remake of “The Strangers.”
In that sense, sequel “The Purge: Anarchy” is everything its predecessor could and should have been. Clearly taking criticisms of the first “Purge” to heart, and armed with a bigger budget thanks to the first film’s highly profitable box office takings, DeMonaco removes the action from those restrictive four walls and drops it into the streets of Los Angeles. As the annual Purge commences once again, we follow a group of five individuals who find themselves trapped in downtown L.A.: there’s Shane and Liz (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez), a young couple whose car dies on the highway and who are being relentlessly pursued by a masked gang; there’s Eva and Cali (Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul), a waitress and her teenage daughter just trying to make it through the night when they are mysteriously targeted in their home by an armed military force; and then there’s Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo), an ex-cop who willingly sets off on Purge Night, armed to the teeth and driving around in an armored car, for reasons unknown.
Brought together, they battle to survive in a city-wide 12-hour warzone, dodging armed thugs, snipers on rooftops, and family members with a grudge. DeMonaco maintains a gripping air of unease as the group are stalked, hunted and attacked at practically every corner they turn, all the while he recalls images of gangland anarchy from dystopian cult classics “Escape from New York” and “The Warriors:” a city bus racing down the road while fully ablaze, the body of a pension-thieving stockbroker strung up outside a court, and masked maniacs running down the streets wielding machine guns and baseball bats. All haunting images which paint a brutal picture of an America torn apart by violence, and violence not only sanctioned by the US government, but encouraged by it, too.
Grillo, meanwhile, makes a pretty damn convincing argument for him to play Frank Castle in a future “Punisher” movie: protective yet stand-offish, grizzled and commanding, and with an intriguingly tragic undercurrent, he’s got the personality down pat -- not to mention, he’s a certified badass, practically unstoppable either with a gun or his bare mitts. All that’s missing is a skull on his chest. His fellow survivors are a mixed bag: Eva and Cali are quick to gain our sympathy thanks to their believable and touching mother-daughter connection, plus the fact that they’re thrust into this horrible situation despite their best efforts. Shane and Liz, meanwhile, are a boring and rather vacuous couple, without much personality or chemistry. Not to be mean, but giving a hoot about either of them proves difficult, resulting in a supposedly heart-wrenching moment towards the end falling flat on its face.
In the scene before that, DeMonaco sees an opportunity to ram home the film's message and rams pretty damn hard, as we witness the top 1% auctioning off the poor for slaughter. It’s this darkly disturbing scene, along with the earlier depictions of city-wide violence among the poor, which makes “The Purge: Anarchy” not just a solidly diverting b-movie, but one with real satirical bite. If “The Purge” merely nibbled on America’s culture of violence and government-enforced class inequality, “The Purge: Anarchy” takes a big, fat chomp out of it and spits it back out in disgust. Sure, it’s hardly the most subtle of messages -- the point about the inequality gap is repeatedly shoved down our throats, and as if to shove it even harder, a stupendously unnerving rendition of America the Beautiful blares over the closing credits -- but in terms of taking advantage of and exploring the satirical potential of its central concept, it boasts an appreciable thoroughness that was entirely lacking in its predecessor.
Rating: 7/10
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