The Purge: Election Year

It would seem that writer-director James DeMonaco is growing bored with his own franchise, as The Purge: Election Year is a rather toothless affair overall.  After 2014's The Purge: Anarchy opened up the film's cinematic world and gave us some genuine tension, this movie is a step back.  It's a simplistic action film backed up by an even more simplistic and heavy-handed message about the elite taking advantage of the poor and minorities.  I have no problem with the message, rather with how it's delivered.  The movie is preachy and moralistic, condemning violence, yet it frequently uses violent images in order to grab our attention.  The violent scenes often are not even part of the story.  We just get to see the main characters watch the violence happen in the streets, and shake their heads.  It's total cheap thrills for the sake of the audience, and it adds nothing.

Just as in the previous two films, we enter an America set in the near-future where for 12 hours on one day, all crime - including murder - is legal.  The largely clueless political bigwigs claim that this is what keeps America great, but there are certain people in power who believe that this event is used to clear away the poor and undesirables of the world.  One of those people is Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), who is running her campaign for President on getting rid of the annual Purge.  While her political rival (David Aaron Baker) wants to keep the event going and plots to murder her during this year's Purge, her chief security officer Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo, returning from the last movie) vows to keep her alive by any means necessary.  After Charlie and Leo escape from an attack on her private home, they seek shelter in a deli run by a local man (Mykelti Williamson), who joins up in the mission to keep Senator Roan alive during the night.

During the course of the Purge, our heroes come across militia, Neo Nazi skinheads, gangs, and deranged spoiled teenagers.  The one group of people they face that I was truly interested in were the "Murder Tourists".  They are people from other countries who vacation in America in order to take part in the Purge.  This idea fascinated me, and I almost think a movie about this could be quite successful.  Unfortunately, it is underutilized, and only used in a scene that lasts about 25 seconds or so.  Honestly, there are ideas in the film that I can see working, but it would require a sense of dark satire that DeMonaco apparently does not possess.  He views his movies as straight up action thrillers, while occasionally slowing down once in a while to make some obvious statements about people in power being corrupt, and how hard working minorities and the poor are constantly being trampled on.  It spells out its message in such a heavy handed and simplistic way, almost as if it thinks we don't understand what it's trying to say.  I'm all for movies having something to say, but not when it treats me like an idiot.

But what bothered me the most about Election Year is that it never takes an actual stance on its violence.  The carnage of The Purge itself is largely kept in the background, as our heroes drive down the empty streets, looking at the destruction.  What this means is that our heroes are seldom placed in danger, and when they are, only the bad guys are allowed to get killed for a majority of the film.  Not only does this kill any tension the film may be trying to create, but it makes it come across as just another generic action thriller.  It's not until the film's third act, set in a chapel, that our heroes suddenly find themselves in real danger.  As an action climax, the whole sequence in the chapel feels unnecessarily dragged out.  It seems to take forever for the action to kick in, and once it does, it's not worth waiting for.  That's what I meant earlier when I said this was largely a toothless movie.  A film like this should have us wondering if any of the heroes, even the major ones, will survive.  Here, there is little to no doubt that a majority of them will live to see the morning. 

So, what is this movie trying to tell us?  That The Purge is a bad idea, and the people who support it are wrong?  Okay, no kidding.  Why not dig deeper into the premise?  How did The Purge get started in the first place?  Which one of the people behind it thought it up?  According to press notes, that was actually DeMonaco's original idea.  He wanted to do a prequel that showed the very first Purge.  But when returning star Frank Grillo became available, he decided to do a sequel instead.  What a costly mistake.  All a sequel does is show us what we have already seen before.  And since the characters in the film are desensitized to The Purge, since they've been living through it most of their lives, we don't get the emotional response that we expect.  I can only imagine the drama that could be created by showing people experiencing the event for the first time.  Should there be a sequel (and there likely will be, as the movies are cheap to make and have strong opening weekends), I hope he does get to explore this direction.

Instead of answers, all we get in Election Year is more of the same.  It's a rehashed sequel going through the motions, and bringing nothing new to the table.  It doesn't even work as cheap thrill entertainment, because we know with certainty that almost everyone is going to be okay in the end.  In order for this franchise to work, it needs to develop a darker sense of satire, and have something to say that isn't so blatantly obvious.

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