Keeping the action in lockdown

FILM REVIEW

 

 

The Purge
DIRECTED BY: James DeMonaco
STARRING: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane
CERT: 15A

IT’S the year 2022 and with crime and unemployment at almost zero, America may finally have achieved its dream.

This near-perfect society didn’t happen by accident, obviously. In the wake of catastrophic recession, a new regime emerges with one big idea to cure all ills. As the New Founding Fathers see it, what the people need is a chance to let off steam, an opportunity to vent their frustrations, get all the anger out of their system.
So they introduce The Purge, an annual night of murder and madness. Each year, on March 21, all crime between the hours of 7pm and 7am will go unpunished. It’s a national free-for-all, televised live for your added entertainment. The only rule is that you can’t use anything too powerful on your murderous mission. So, much as you might like to unleash a bazooka on your boss’s forehead, you will have to make do with, say, a machine gun.

Now, clearly, there are certain folks who will have an advantage here, an edge on the competition. The wealthy, for example, who can protect themselves by turning their homes into fortresses thanks to expensive security systems. Or the guy who sells these security systems and has become the wealthiest on the block by selling them to all his neighbours. Such a man might think he is untouchable and he’d have every cause to be thinking it. But of course, he would be wrong.
This man is James Sandin (Hawke), top dog at work and major control freak at home. Which seems fine with his wife Mary (Headey) and whizzkid son Charlie (Burkholder), but doesn’t go down so well with teenage daughter Zoe (Kane), mostly on account of an older, forbidden boyfriend.

But Sandin will do anything to keep his family safe and, this year, he’s going to have to.
Not long after the shutters come down and the siren signals the start of The Purge, young Charlie spots something on the surveillance cameras. There’s a man outside in the street, on the run and clearly in distress. Not a fan of The Purge to begin with, Charlie takes pity on the man and lets him in. With dad otherwise occupied, the stranger (Edwin Hodge) promptly disappears inside the house.

Which is bad enough, until a heavily-armed gang turns up at the door. Their head honcho (Tony Oller) politely makes it known that he and his merry bunch were hunting a certain individual, who seems to have taken refuge in the house. If Sandin doesn’t do the decent patriotic thing and hand this worthless nobody over to meet his fate, then this bunch of rascals will just have to come in a kill everyone.

The Purge is basically a home invasion movie and as these things go, it’s a decent little chiller with more than its fair share of well-crafted tension. Hawke’s overbearing Dad is not a very likable man, but he’s a believable character and well played. The kids are standard Hollywood cut-outs but Lena Headey gives Mary a certain unreadable edge, the kind of heroically stoic Mom who could just snap at any second.
The film boasts a fine creepy villain, too, not least because he bears a striking resemblance to Christian Bale’s murderous yuppie in American Psycho. With this guy and his trippy cohorts prancing around, there’s a genuine sense that the family is in peril ­ and that, just for once, there’s a chance that no one will get out of this alive.

It is a bit disappointing that the action is confined to one place, that you don’t get a bigger picture of what’s going down. It would be nice if there was a little more in-depth background and if we knew more about these New Founding Fathers of the nation.

Still and all, The Purge is a fascinating idea and not a million miles away from reality. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to go shopping in the States during the Black Friday sales at Thanksgiving, you will know that ­ on one day each year many otherwise normal people are only too happy for an excuse to beat the living crap out of each other. And, in some cases, even kill for a bargain. You might not need to do much political engineering to ramp that up.

The film throws up several intriguing propositions, too. Would you take part in The Purge? Why? Or indeed, why not? What would you do and who would you do it to and would you be able to live with yourself afterwards? If you found yourself in Sandin’s dilemma, how far would you go to save your loved ones?

Oh, and which of your neighbours do you think would like to kill you? Because, hey, you could be right!