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Ever since Jaws hit the screens in 1975, the summer movie season became a time for high concept features. Some of the more recent high concept films of the summer range from Spielberg’s other summer smash hit Jurassic Park to Snakes on a Plane. And the most recent high concept film to hit the screens is The Purge. The Purge is a film where America is reborn under the rule of the New Founding Fathers. They have decreed that once a year for twelve hours over night all crime is legal and emergency services are suspended. This time of rampant killing is known as the purge, where people vent their angers and hatreds; a catharsis way of dealing with crime if you will. The result of this new law is that crime, poverty, and unemployment are at an all time low. The movie follows one family named the Sandins, who live in a nice house in a very well to do neighborhood, and have the latest and best security system for their home. They are locking down for the night as the purge begins. Only problem is James Sandin’s son lets in an injured homeless person who is being pursued, and now they are standing between a group of sociopath yuppies and their prey. That is the concept and the plot of this movie, and it is SO F**KING STUPID! I could go on about this movie, but I will try to keep this as short as I need it to be.
I majored in criminology and criminal justice in college, earning my degree from a very prestigious school in this field. And I can tell you CRIME DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY! Crime involves many different factors. Most theories focus on the social and the economic. The weakest of these theories are “general theories” of crime that try to find a blanket answer to all crime. Theories like the 4 Social Bonds theory and Self Control Theory are particularly weak. New theories that show great promise such as biosocial criminology; look at influences that blend the social and economic issues with psychological, biochemical and even genetic influences and how they influence a person to commit crime. A person not just people in general. Both nature AND nurture being important factors to be examined when determining what causes crime and how to deal with it, and examining crime as a phenomena as varying, individual, and complex as human nature itself. In layman’s terms: crime is very complicated, and motivations for offending vary greatly, and it is not going to be solved by something so simple, broad, and stupid. Now the one thing this film got right is that politicians wrote this law. Politicians have been writing stupid laws and bills for years that focus on one factor of crime, claiming that the crime problem will be solved if we pass this one bill. That part the movie got correct; where they failed is that in this fantasy world, the oversimplified law actually works. This differs greatly from reality where cheap political slogans like “less guns less crime,” prohibition, and the like in fact do very little to reduce crime, and in many cases do more harm than good. The premise that legalizing murder for a few hours will not only reduce crime by catharsis, but also strengthen the economy is ridiculous! This implies that all crime is committed out of frustration, and that if we just make it legal for a little while it will disappear. Problem there is that the majority of street crime is committed by “lifetime persistent offenders,” these are people who make crime their career; that is their job and they choose to do this instead of a nine to five job. They will not wait for the purge to commit their crimes. Then there is the issue of where are your organized crime syndicates in this movie? What happened to the Mafia? The Yakuza and Triads? La Eme and the Hells Angels? Did they just stop operating? What about substance abusers who constantly need their fix? They sure as hell are not going to be able to wait to do drugs once a year! And then there are those who supply the drugs and fight over drug turf in gangland style wars. And this is just street crime, I haven’t even gone into white collar crimes! So the premise of the movie is complete *****; anyone who has seen the trailer knows this.
Watching this film I tried to make some sense of this horrible movie by thinking, maybe the movie is supposed to be ridiculous. Maybe this ridiculous concept is supposed to be a satire of some kind? If so, what is this movie trying to satire? Are they trying to satirize the home security industry? In the film the big security systems are more for show and do not do much to deter a truly determined intruder, since the heavy shutters are shown getting ripped off by a very heavy truck and chains. This could be a swipe at home security systems, but this is not explored enough in detail to be satire. Is this a political jab against a current political movement in the US? Is it from the perspective of a left winger trying to condemn the Tea Party and other patriot groups? There were references to the New Founding Fathers and the Purge is draped in patriotism. But that idea holds no water, since the patriot groups want a return to the Constitution and the OLD Founding Fathers; and I am pretty sure the enlightened and educated minds of Jefferson and Washington would be disgusted by this barbarism. Is this a subtle condemnation of Obama and progressives based on the idea that they are trying to rebuild America in their image and they will be the New Founding Fathers of a new world order and that involves purging the unwanted in their first step toward socialism and then a new communist state? NO! DON’T BE A MORON! Now yes the leader of the antagonists has all the political fervor of someone who would fit right in with Chairman Mao’s Red Guards, but let’s face it, if anyone would be purged in a movie like that, the rich would be the primary target. Is it about class and race? That is not it; since there are mostly rich white people in the movie. It is hard to do a decent satire on race and class with just one homeless black guy, especially when race is never mentioned. Is it about violence and society? Any attempt at satire is lost in the fact that violence is used to solve their problems in the end. So no, this film is not a satire, it is just a very poorly thought out concept with a lousy script. Dr Strangelove, this movie is not.
What makes this film worse is that there are no characters that are likable in this film. The wife is an idiot who gets so caught up in her anti-purge feelings, that on multiple occasions she refuses to kill active and legitimate threats to her family’s safety. The daughter is bland and boring and the kid brother is the dumbass who got them is this mess to begin with! And the homeless guy, the initial victim, is unlikable since once he is inside the he tries to hold the daughter hostage. But the worst offender is James Sandin (Ethan Hawke). He sells these big and expensive security systems we know are more for looking good. He knows the flaws of the security design, and yet he installs one anyway. Worst of all he does little else to supplement his security plan even with the knowledge of the security systems weaknesses. He does not have a security plan should the walls be breached, no one in the house knows how to enter and clear a damn room, and the choice of weapons is laughable! The weapons that Jim has are four handguns and a pistol grip shotgun. And the shotgun is the STUPID “chainsaw” Mossberg 500 shotgun model that requires you to shot from the hip instead of aiming it.
Mossberg Chainsaw 500
This weapon looks so damn stupid I started laughing in the middle of a scene that is supposed to be intense! To top it off, if you are going to have all those guns in the house it is a good idea to have your family know how to use them, since only Jim really seemed to have any idea of how to handle a damn weapon.
So we have a movie with no likable characters, a stupid concept based on ludicrous thinking, and no satirical value. But is it fun or at the very least scary? To both questions, the answer is no. The lack of investment in the main characters well being combined with the fact that the “twists” of the movie are obviously foreshadowed, and that their asses get saved at the last second way too often makes this a very boring and predictable film. Even the antagonists are not scary; they are just some spoiled rich college kids who drank the Kool-Aid. They were more annoying than anything else. The production values were good enough, but all in all this is a piece of crap. And since this is from the same producers who brought us Paranormal Activity, you can tell this was made on the cheap. Basically it is a movie that tries to hook you with the trailer only to disappoint in the theaters. My final verdict? To quote Jay Sherman:
IT STINKS!
Ever since Jaws hit the screens in 1975, the summer movie season became a time for high concept features. Some of the more recent high concept films of the summer range from Spielberg’s other summer smash hit Jurassic Park to Snakes on a Plane. And the most recent high concept film to hit the screens is The Purge. The Purge is a film where America is reborn under the rule of the New Founding Fathers. They have decreed that once a year for twelve hours over night all crime is legal and emergency services are suspended. This time of rampant killing is known as the purge, where people vent their angers and hatreds; a catharsis way of dealing with crime if you will. The result of this new law is that crime, poverty, and unemployment are at an all time low. The movie follows one family named the Sandins, who live in a nice house in a very well to do neighborhood, and have the latest and best security system for their home. They are locking down for the night as the purge begins. Only problem is James Sandin’s son lets in an injured homeless person who is being pursued, and now they are standing between a group of sociopath yuppies and their prey. That is the concept and the plot of this movie, and it is SO F**KING STUPID! I could go on about this movie, but I will try to keep this as short as I need it to be.
I majored in criminology and criminal justice in college, earning my degree from a very prestigious school in this field. And I can tell you CRIME DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY! Crime involves many different factors. Most theories focus on the social and the economic. The weakest of these theories are “general theories” of crime that try to find a blanket answer to all crime. Theories like the 4 Social Bonds theory and Self Control Theory are particularly weak. New theories that show great promise such as biosocial criminology; look at influences that blend the social and economic issues with psychological, biochemical and even genetic influences and how they influence a person to commit crime. A person not just people in general. Both nature AND nurture being important factors to be examined when determining what causes crime and how to deal with it, and examining crime as a phenomena as varying, individual, and complex as human nature itself. In layman’s terms: crime is very complicated, and motivations for offending vary greatly, and it is not going to be solved by something so simple, broad, and stupid. Now the one thing this film got right is that politicians wrote this law. Politicians have been writing stupid laws and bills for years that focus on one factor of crime, claiming that the crime problem will be solved if we pass this one bill. That part the movie got correct; where they failed is that in this fantasy world, the oversimplified law actually works. This differs greatly from reality where cheap political slogans like “less guns less crime,” prohibition, and the like in fact do very little to reduce crime, and in many cases do more harm than good. The premise that legalizing murder for a few hours will not only reduce crime by catharsis, but also strengthen the economy is ridiculous! This implies that all crime is committed out of frustration, and that if we just make it legal for a little while it will disappear. Problem there is that the majority of street crime is committed by “lifetime persistent offenders,” these are people who make crime their career; that is their job and they choose to do this instead of a nine to five job. They will not wait for the purge to commit their crimes. Then there is the issue of where are your organized crime syndicates in this movie? What happened to the Mafia? The Yakuza and Triads? La Eme and the Hells Angels? Did they just stop operating? What about substance abusers who constantly need their fix? They sure as hell are not going to be able to wait to do drugs once a year! And then there are those who supply the drugs and fight over drug turf in gangland style wars. And this is just street crime, I haven’t even gone into white collar crimes! So the premise of the movie is complete *****; anyone who has seen the trailer knows this.
Watching this film I tried to make some sense of this horrible movie by thinking, maybe the movie is supposed to be ridiculous. Maybe this ridiculous concept is supposed to be a satire of some kind? If so, what is this movie trying to satire? Are they trying to satirize the home security industry? In the film the big security systems are more for show and do not do much to deter a truly determined intruder, since the heavy shutters are shown getting ripped off by a very heavy truck and chains. This could be a swipe at home security systems, but this is not explored enough in detail to be satire. Is this a political jab against a current political movement in the US? Is it from the perspective of a left winger trying to condemn the Tea Party and other patriot groups? There were references to the New Founding Fathers and the Purge is draped in patriotism. But that idea holds no water, since the patriot groups want a return to the Constitution and the OLD Founding Fathers; and I am pretty sure the enlightened and educated minds of Jefferson and Washington would be disgusted by this barbarism. Is this a subtle condemnation of Obama and progressives based on the idea that they are trying to rebuild America in their image and they will be the New Founding Fathers of a new world order and that involves purging the unwanted in their first step toward socialism and then a new communist state? NO! DON’T BE A MORON! Now yes the leader of the antagonists has all the political fervor of someone who would fit right in with Chairman Mao’s Red Guards, but let’s face it, if anyone would be purged in a movie like that, the rich would be the primary target. Is it about class and race? That is not it; since there are mostly rich white people in the movie. It is hard to do a decent satire on race and class with just one homeless black guy, especially when race is never mentioned. Is it about violence and society? Any attempt at satire is lost in the fact that violence is used to solve their problems in the end. So no, this film is not a satire, it is just a very poorly thought out concept with a lousy script. Dr Strangelove, this movie is not.
What makes this film worse is that there are no characters that are likable in this film. The wife is an idiot who gets so caught up in her anti-purge feelings, that on multiple occasions she refuses to kill active and legitimate threats to her family’s safety. The daughter is bland and boring and the kid brother is the dumbass who got them is this mess to begin with! And the homeless guy, the initial victim, is unlikable since once he is inside the he tries to hold the daughter hostage. But the worst offender is James Sandin (Ethan Hawke). He sells these big and expensive security systems we know are more for looking good. He knows the flaws of the security design, and yet he installs one anyway. Worst of all he does little else to supplement his security plan even with the knowledge of the security systems weaknesses. He does not have a security plan should the walls be breached, no one in the house knows how to enter and clear a damn room, and the choice of weapons is laughable! The weapons that Jim has are four handguns and a pistol grip shotgun. And the shotgun is the STUPID “chainsaw” Mossberg 500 shotgun model that requires you to shot from the hip instead of aiming it.
Mossberg Chainsaw 500
This weapon looks so damn stupid I started laughing in the middle of a scene that is supposed to be intense! To top it off, if you are going to have all those guns in the house it is a good idea to have your family know how to use them, since only Jim really seemed to have any idea of how to handle a damn weapon.
So we have a movie with no likable characters, a stupid concept based on ludicrous thinking, and no satirical value. But is it fun or at the very least scary? To both questions, the answer is no. The lack of investment in the main characters well being combined with the fact that the “twists” of the movie are obviously foreshadowed, and that their asses get saved at the last second way too often makes this a very boring and predictable film. Even the antagonists are not scary; they are just some spoiled rich college kids who drank the Kool-Aid. They were more annoying than anything else. The production values were good enough, but all in all this is a piece of crap. And since this is from the same producers who brought us Paranormal Activity, you can tell this was made on the cheap. Basically it is a movie that tries to hook you with the trailer only to disappoint in the theaters. My final verdict? To quote Jay Sherman:
IT STINKS!