It's sequel time here at CA towers. Frank Grillo shows us that he's more than ready to play Frank Castle in a the next Punisher movie, he is monumentally badass in James DeMonaco's bigger and louder follow-up to last years genre letdown, The Purge. The Purge: Anarchy ups the ante, throws on the mean streets and kicks our asses. This is pure B-Grade 80s Style action at it's finest. Check out my review after the jump.....
Last year we the
cinema goers were presented with a film called The Purge, the idea...
America is pretty much a crime free country 365 days of the year,
there has been a huge drop in the amount of homeless people and it's
all down to the new founding fathers, a sort of totalitarian
government who passed a bill saying that once a year they will have a
purge. What is a purge? For 12 hours all crime is legal, murder,
robbery, arson..etc are all legal and there will be no repercussions.
Hmmm that sounds pretty promising doesn't it?, well it turned out
that the first film was infact just a Home Invasion thriller, a
single location movie about a family having to fight off people who
want to kill them. It wasn't an awful film and there were some good
performances, especially Ethan Hawk, who, of recent has become the
go-to genre actor. The first film promised a lot and let the viewers
down, they also classed it as a Horror film and there's about 2
moments which could be considered as “horror” but the film made
enough money to warrant green-lighting a sequel. Fast forward one
year and the sequel is out. This time it takes the same premise set
out in the first and takes us out of the single location setting of
Purge 1 and plops us right onto the streets for 90 minutes of chaos
and Anarchy, which the latter is this sequel's, Subtitle, The Purge:
Anarchy.
So plot wise we're
on the same night as the first film as the sun sets and the claxon
sounds for the start of the annual purger. Grizzled badass Frank
Grillo sits in his bare apartment with a look of determination on his
face as he loads a pistol, then we see that he's packing an entire
arsnal of weaponry which is laid out on his bed, A knock at the door
and a woman appears begging Grillo not to go out, he basically tells
her to fuck off as he puts on a bullet proof jacket. Two people in a
car, a man and a woman who are travelling home are separating, their
Car stalls in the middle of the city as a gang of rufians stalk them.
The bickering due decided to make a run for it. A waitress makes her
way home to her father and her daughter. Their apartment is small and
in a bad neighbourhood. As Darkness falls, Grillo ventures into the
city in his battle proof car and his shit load of guns. The couple
run down ally ways and hide behind dust bins as the group of rufians
give chase. The father of the waitress leaves the apartment, the
girls find a note exclaiming that he was dying and that fifty
thousand dollars would be paid to them by a group of rich people who
can take part in the purge without leaving their home. Suddenly the
super-nintendo chalmers of the apartment complex blows the doors off
and threatens to kill the women as a group of heavily armoured and
armed men, who look like a government sanctioned death squad enter
the building, take out Chalmers and take the girls outside to kill
them. Grillo see's them and does what any heavily armed badass would
do, He kills each and everyone of them, rescuing the girls and making
a break for it in the darkness. They meet up with the bickering
couple and the five of them try and make their way across the city
and to avoid getting killed.
Let me start by
saying that The Purge: Anarchy is a huge, huge, huge improvement over
the first film. It's bigger in scope, ambition and action.
Essentially what we have here is an 80s era John Carpenter film
complete with Reagan-like digs at the government, the upper and
low-class divide of They Live and the city wide chase and action of
Escape From New York with Grillo playing the part of the reluctant
ant-hero, Snake Plisskin. If this film proves one thing, it's that
Grillo needs to play the Punisher ASAP. If the film had a
Carpenter-esque score, we would be in heaven. It also seems heavily
influenced by the 1993 film, Judgement Night, that starred Emilio
Estevez and Dennis Leary which follows a group of friends making an
escape across a city while being chased by a crime lord.
Writer/Director
James DeMonarco is clearly a fan of Carpenter and the whole 80s
B-movie action genre and it shows in the way he shoots the film,
flamethrowers, evil government death squads and a perfectly cast
Grillo. IMDB classes The Purge 2 as Action, Horror and Thriller, the
action and thriller points are spot on because there are some great
shoot-outs and it's very thrilling but the Horror element doesn't
come from jump scares or spooky monsters, the horror comes from the
depravity that humans will go to when killing is legal for 12 hours,
that is the only horror I got from the film. As with most films, The
Purge 2, I think a little more character development on Grillo's
character and some more background on the actual Purge it's self was
needed, but, despite these minor flaws, if you're looking for an old
school, 80s style action B-movie, Anarchy is the best around.
The film also
benefits from an R rating, a film like this would never work as a
PG-13 due to the continuous graphic violence and yes ladies and
gents, The Purge 2 is a violent movie. I guess if Blumhouse wanted to
go the PG-13 route, they could have but instead opted to aim the film
at a much older audience and this is the biggest selling point of the
movie, it pulls no punches when showing the graphic violence and the
endless F-bombs.
So in conclusion,
The Purge: Anarchy is a massive marked improvement on the first film,
it's bigger, more badass, brutal and above all much smarter than it's
predecessor. Frank Grillo is awesome, the action is tight and bloody
and the film moves at a perfect pace. It does have it's flaws but
they're only minor. If DeMonaco does gives us a Purge 3, and stays to
this vision/concept then i'll be there, just please bring back
Grillo. The Purge: Anarchy gets's a solid 4/5 from this guy.
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