179 - The Purge

    On the one night a year that murder is legalized, a family is faced with an ethical question when a gang arrives, demanding that the family turn over a man who is hiding in their house.
    It’s remarkable how effective this premise is.  It’s a completely ridiculous idea, but these ideas are so easy to grasp that it captures the imagination.  For all of the flaws in the idea, it forces the viewer to keep thinking about the idea.  For every hole, you keep on coming up with another idea to balance it out.
    The movie is a little better than I expected.  It starts well enough, and it ends well enough.  It’s the middle act that gets a bit muddy.  There’s a subplot with the daughter’s boyfriend, which plays as almost a mini-plot for the first act, but it becomes irrelevant to the story immediately afterward.  It’s mostly a ridiculously convoluted way to get another gun into the house.
    There are a few issues with the premise that are addressed in the story, but in some cases, aren’t given enough time to thicken up.  With stories like Battle Royale, (or even The Hunger Games) it’s clear that the participants aren’t willing.  (This was something I took issue with in The Hunger Games.  I would expect some of the districts to spend their time training volunteers.)  The problem with The Purge is in the lack of borders, the lack of defined participants.  People can decline to participate, and that’s as far as that goes.  The fact of the matter is… this kind of idea could never work.  Even supposing that the idea got off the ground once, there would be a massive backlash afterward.  It would perpetuate a revenge cycle similar to most gang violence.  The main difference is the idea that it would be spread out and confined to one night each year.  Still not good enough.
    Is the idea that this would encourage good behavior from everyone, since they might die if someone gets annoyed?  I doubt it.
    What would make sense is the use of disguises.

    When I’ve shown people the original Dawn of the Dead, there isn’t a reaction of awe to it.  I often wind up telling them that it’s not that the movie is scary, it’s about placing yourself in the situation and deciding how you would deal with the situation.  This was able to convince my father that the movie was worthwhile.

    I wonder if this movie fits the same mold.  There are more interesting ideas that are presented by the scenario, but this movie doesn’t explore them as well as they should.

    There are political aspects to the movie.  I kept thinking that there were two opposed ideas being explored.  First, a very conservative fantasy of blowing away home invaders, and second, the fairly liberal idea that those in privilege have an obligation to do what’s right, even if it puts them at risk.

    One last little thing.  About 2/3rds of the way through the movie, in the space of a single scene, every character switches their positions.  I think this would play better if they weren’t all done at once.