Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Purge

The PurgeThe Gist: In a more “enlightened” America, every year, for 12 hours, all crime is legal and all emergency services are suspended.  It’s always at night.  Either you purge, or you try to survive the night.

I admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this movie, but I still found the premise behind it worth checking out.  Imagine if we were legally authorize to do anything we wanted (there are very few limits on what can be done) for 12 hours.

I know it sounds ridiculous, and it is, because the body count in the morning would be unthinkable and just imagine the clean up costs and the damages to businesses, but it really made me think about the chasm between the haves and have-nots.

The Purge is all centered around a well-off family that finds itself in the crosshairs of a gang of young yuppies lusting for blood and the morality of helping an innocent homeless man escape a certain and brutal death for no purpose but a desire to kill and maim.

The problem worsens when the family’s envious neighbors also decide to “exercise their rights and duties as Americans” and purge their souls of their jealousy.  All morality is thrown out for a night, so the assailants simply expect the victims to willingly play their part.  You either support the purge and act upon your instincts or you must submit to the others’ needs to purge.

The Bottom Line: The Purge is not a particularly good movie but it has an interesting, if extreme, premise and a few times here and there it actually succeeds in generating some good thought-provoking points.

Grade: 5

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