“The Purge” (2013)
Starring Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, Max
Burkholder, Adelaide Kane, Edwin Hodge
Written and directed by James DeMonaco
Rated R for strong, disturbing violence
and some language
Sometimes at Dollar Tree, you find movies you've never heard of starring actors you've never heard of. Other times, you find a well-known movie that spawned a franchise you just never got around to watching.
Hollywood is frequently criticized these days for churning out sequel after sequel, interrupted only by the occasional remake. I get that, but I've found myself recently going back and starting a lot of franchises I never watched and curious about others. What can I say, I like big worlds and continuing stories.
I've also been curious about “The Purge” since it was released, mainly because I find the question of “Is something right just because it's legal?” an interesting one.* Spoilers follow.
You see the problem with this; I see the problem with this; and so do the children of James Sandin (Hawke), a man who has made so much money selling high-end security systems primarily for Purge Night that he's debating whether the boat he buys should have space for a car inside it. He, and presumably a lot of other Americans, have convinced themselves that the violence and terror unleashed once a year are a worthwhile, and even somehow moral, trade-off for all the good it's done.
DeMonaco isn't trying to convince you that's a valid argument for a second, but he does show how people could conceivably buy into something so extreme. James and his wife Mary (Headey) don't participate; they lock themselves in their massive home with metal barricades over the doors and windows and an arsenal of firearms just in case.
Their son Charlie (Burkholder) has questions, while their daughter Zoey (Kane) is more focused on her 18-year-old boyfriend Henry (Tony Oller), who her father has forbidden her to see because of their age difference. Henry has snuck back into the house to “talk” to her father, while Charlie spots a bloodied homeless man (Hodge) fleeing from a murderous mob and calling for help. As he lets the refugee into the house, Henry confronts James, not with a reasoned argument and impassioned plea not to stand in the way of love, but with a gun.
Shots are fired, Henry is fatally wounded, and the stranger, identified in the credits and closed captioning only as Bloody Stranger, runs for cover. As if that wasn't enough, a group of masked figures appear on the front porch demanding the Sandins turn over the Bloody Stranger so they can continue their Purge festivities.
Their position is articulated with fanatic eloquence by the young man identified in the credits as the Polite Leader (Rhys Wakefield), who has removed the mask that strongly resembles his own punchable face.*** He explains that they have every right to kill the homeless “swine” and that as fellow “haves,” the Sandins should allow them to do so. He has no trouble killing a member of his posse, nor with murdering the Sandins should they defy his demands.
After a brutal confrontation with the Stranger in which he orders his wife to jam a letter opener into the man's gunshot wound in order to subdue him, James is forced to confront the depravity of his own actions. Finally, he relents: They will not send the Stranger out to his death, but they will fight with lethal force to protect their family.
The movie shifts into high gear as the gang uses a truck to pull down the Sandins' barricades and enters the house. After a furious game of cats and mice, James is fatally stabbed by the Polite Leader who is in turn gunned down by Zoey, using her dead boyfriend's gun. Mary is saved from two members of the gang by neighbors who decided that they may as well engage in some Purging of their own by killing the Sandins, who they feel have rubbed their wealth in their faces. In a predictable but nonetheless gratifying moment, the Bloody Stranger saves the family, shooting one of the neighbors but holding the rest at gunpoint.
Instead of an action-packed finale, the group sits at a table until morning. When one of the unneighborly neighbors makes a last lunge for a gun, just before the Purge officially ends at 7 a.m., Mary busts her nose and slams her head into the table – but does not kill her. Then, the neighbors and the Stranger walk off to what passes as normal life, with just 364 days until the next Purge.
I liked it. I'm a little surprised how much I liked it. I don't enjoy celebrations of violence, but this is not that. I'd heard the first movie didn't delve very deep into the idea of the Purge itself and came across as a pretty standard home invasion movie. Maybe I misunderstood, because I did not find that to be true. There are a number of ways to explore the concept, which I presume is what the sequels – and spinoff TV series – do. This story is told through the eyes of a family that profits from the Purge but doesn't participate, putting them kind of in the middle rather than being true believers or principled opponents.
No death is wasted. A major pet peeve of mine is when deaths are played for laughs (unless it's as absurd as “Hot Shots Part Deux”) and nameless characters serve as cannon fodder. Bloody Stranger doesn't get a name, but the value of his life is expressed in his own desperation, Charlie's empathy and the gradual determination of the Sandins. Even the grainy security footage of past Purge murders are uncomfortable. And when James kills one of the masked murderers, he's affected by seeing the face of the young woman whose life he just ended.
I confess at one point I rolled my eyes when a commentator said something about how the Purge targets the poor, who can't afford to protect themselves, thinking, “They had to make it political.” But 1) all “political” issues are about topics that are deeply personal to some and affect real people and 2) of course that's what would happen. The Polite Leader and his gang hated the have-nots but one caller to a radio station wants to kill his boss and Henry is just there to kill his girlfriend's dad to he can sleep with an underage girl (or do so more). DeMonaco isn't interested in a debate as to whether a little evil is worth it for an alleged greater good. He makes it clear throughout the film that whatever people tell others or themselves, their Purge actions are about their own desires and hatred, not any higher purpose.
I had a few qualms. The presence of Henry is necessary to the story for a couple reasons, but it still feels like one too many inciting incidents. James' transformation into action hero in one sequence seems to come out of nowhere. I suppose as someone determined to protect his family from government-sanctioned violence, it makes sense that he would have undergone training. Or perhaps he's got a military or law enforcement background. Still, it seemed surprising that he had the skills of the head of IT for a pharmaceutical company employing questionable scientists.
While James did defend his home with lethal force and the Bloody Stranger kills one of the unneighborly second group of intruders, I was glad that, as things wrapped up, Mary elected to forego further revenge killings. By law, they had the “right” to eliminate the neighbors, and, for trying to kill her children, Mary certainly had some justification. But she was adamant that no one else would die, if not out of compassion then in rejection of the idea that anyone is less entitled to life – or even more simply, to not be murdered – than anybody else.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Hodge, who has done many things but I will always remember from “Jack and Bobby,” a CW show that lasted one season but remains a favorite because it was one I watched with my grandmother. Incidentally, she would NOT enjoy “The Purge.”
I'm not sure I enjoyed it either, or that it's supposed to be enjoyed. But I found it interesting and am curious to check out the others. Whether they maintain this level of quality or not will go a long way to determining whether I binge any more.
* - For the record, the answer is no.
** - It's set in 2022, and DeMonaco came up with all this without even knowing about 2020!
*** - I'm not saying the actor should be punched, just that his performance will make you want to punch the character.
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