In what is easily one of the most inventive and interesting premises recent memory, the 'New Founding Fathers" have instituted an annual 12-hour holiday that they call "The Purge". during the Purge all crime including murder is made legal (with the exception of high ranking government officials of course). The film toys with some big ideas including how this keeps our current system of income inequality in place as the rich get an opportunity to kill off the poor and homeless, thus keeping tension off the social safety net. This could have been a truly interesting exploration of systemic racism and class warfare...but instead it squanders it's promise and becomes a typical home invasion movie.
The cast lead by Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey and a villianous Rhys Wakefield do a fine job with the material. This is especially true of Wakefield, who is delightfully creepy and hammy. The two child actors in the film, as well as the homeless man at the center of the conflict, are all serviceable but are given very little to do.
The story centers around Hawke and Headey's family as they lock down and settle in to ride out the Purge in relative safety. There is a quickly abandoned subplot with the eldest daughter and her boyfriend that is resolved and has next to no bearing on the rest of the film. The movie then devolves into a snooze-fest as the main cast attempt to find a homeless man in the dark for 20 minutes in order to escape the wrath of a group of wealthy young purgers led by Wakefield. When time runs out the film picks up some steam before it's anticlimactic denouement.
The purge is by the numbers home invasion movie that squanders it's premise...and if those numbers were being read like this 1...............2..............3........it's super dull and at times very random. The son has some wierd quirks that add nothing and have no payoff. Hawke's character is boring and out of nowhere becomes frickin Rambo for the last 10 minutes of the film.
It's not a terrible film but it isn't cerebral enough to be this slow.
Bottom line: 2 out of 5 stars.
The cast lead by Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey and a villianous Rhys Wakefield do a fine job with the material. This is especially true of Wakefield, who is delightfully creepy and hammy. The two child actors in the film, as well as the homeless man at the center of the conflict, are all serviceable but are given very little to do.
The story centers around Hawke and Headey's family as they lock down and settle in to ride out the Purge in relative safety. There is a quickly abandoned subplot with the eldest daughter and her boyfriend that is resolved and has next to no bearing on the rest of the film. The movie then devolves into a snooze-fest as the main cast attempt to find a homeless man in the dark for 20 minutes in order to escape the wrath of a group of wealthy young purgers led by Wakefield. When time runs out the film picks up some steam before it's anticlimactic denouement.
The purge is by the numbers home invasion movie that squanders it's premise...and if those numbers were being read like this 1...............2..............3........it's super dull and at times very random. The son has some wierd quirks that add nothing and have no payoff. Hawke's character is boring and out of nowhere becomes frickin Rambo for the last 10 minutes of the film.
It's not a terrible film but it isn't cerebral enough to be this slow.
Bottom line: 2 out of 5 stars.