Last year’s “The Purge” was a variation on “Straw Dogs”. In a US Utopia everything is swell because one night, twelve hours, a year, old crime is legal during the purge. One man tries to protect his family as an intruder joins them. “The Purge: Anarchy”, this years sequel of the hugely successful horror movie is better.
One purge night, a mother and daughter and a couple on the verge of divorce find themselves on the streets of L.A. where a man good with guns comes to protection and they are chased by a government sponsored group trying to keep the kill level high on one side, a group finding the unfortunates on the street and selling them to the 1% who are too rich to go hunting themselves for folks to kill.
And finally, yet another group who are against the Purge because they claim it is just a way to kill off the poor. Frank Grillo as the man who saves em is a real star here, a gruff, quiet powerhouse of a superhero who steals the movie, not very difficult to be honest. Nobody else is drawn all that well, it took me forever to figure out the mother and daughter were mother and daughter, but the long nights journey into day is filled with terrifying images and lots of blood and gore and while its moral might be weak (something to do with economic inequality), it takes you through the night with singleminded power.
Director James DeMonaco has made himself a new franchise and I hear they will be spinning Grillo off as a sort of super cop, a latter day Dirty Harry?
Grade: B
