The Purge: Anarchy

The first Purge was a surprise hit last year- having earned $89 million on a 3 million dollar budget. What's not a surprise is that they decided to make a sequel. Most of the time a sequel is rarely as good as the original, but I must say, I really enjoyed Anarchy. Even more than the first movie. It wasn't great by any means, but I still found the whole thing interesting.

The basic premise is pretty much the same as the first movie. So you don't really need to see the first in order to see Anarchy (but I think you should anyway). It takes place in American in the not so distant future. A new government has been formed and has decided that on one night a year, all crime is legal for a 12 hour period (including murder). All police services are suspended and the hospitals are closed during this time as well.

What's different about Anarchy is that, unlike the first, it's not confined to one house. It actually expands and explores this universe. That's what makes it better in my opinion.

The story here follows five characters- a police Sergeant (Frank Grillo) who's out for revenge on the man who killed his son, a mother and daughter named Eva and Cali (Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul), and a married couple- Shane and Liz (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez), who's car breaks down minutes before the Purge is about to start. Circumstances bring them together as they try to survive the night.

I like that director James DeMonaco (who also directed the first Purge) too the time to develop these characters somewhat and made you give a shit about them. Most of them anyway. This is something that doesn't happen to often in movies like this.

I also thought the actors did a decent job, especially Frank Grillo. He's quite the leading man and is a complete bad ass in this.

As I said before though, Anarchy is good but it isn't great. My main problem is that it's loaded with cliches and very predictable. There were several times where I sat there thinking, "Okay, this is about to happen..." and sure enough, it did. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching it. I was certainly never bored.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. I wouldn't tell you to rush out and see it or anything, but definitely check it out at some point.

My Rating: 7/10