A Run-of-the-Mill Thriller for a Single Viewing, Initially Trying to Appear Original
In the near future, the US government has found an effective way to combat social problems: one night a year, citizens are allowed to kill each other. They enthusiastically relieve stress with automatic weapons and baseball bats, so they can start the new work year refreshed and rested. In one exemplary bourgeois family, the latest Purge Night begins with an act of mercy, threatening a real catastrophe.
This is DeMonaco’s third collaboration with Ethan Hawke.
A spoiled boy from a wealthy family takes pity on a black stranger running by and lets him into his parents’ well-protected mansion. A group of young, bloodthirsty aristocrats politely ask the owner to hand the refugee back, promising to kill everyone present if refused. Meanwhile, the stranger hides thoroughly.
Young actor Max Burkholder, who plays the son of the Sandin couple, is no newcomer to the profession: he has been voicing cartoons for eight years.
From a distance, “The Purge” may seem like a rather multi-layered work. It has social criticism, a rebuke of the bestial nature of man, and even obvious biblical symbolism. For the first half-hour, director and screenwriter James DeMonaco does ask questions and even pretends to be looking for answers. However, as is often the case, the anthropological experiments are broken by the once and for all prescribed mechanics of the genre. The characters abruptly stop being themselves and begin to rationalize instead of hysterically fighting, and philosophize when they should be firing from all guns with a battle cry. No, of course, Ethan Hawke, with his intelligent face, incomparably plunges a fire ax into the backs of burglars, and Lena Headey sensually pokes a screwdriver into the wound of an enemy tied to a chair. It just wasn’t necessary to build a whole dystopia and populate it with young maniacs from Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” to make such a movie.
The action takes place in 2022.
Even more confusing is the educational aspect – instead of attacking the idiot offspring who started the whole mess, the respectable family accepts his antics as a matter of course.
As a result, the “do not kill” so diligently broadcast by the authors from the screen gives way to a completely different commandment: “Raise your children strictly, otherwise they will devour everything that grows in your garden.”