Spoiler warnings, natch.

Random thoughts about The Purge: Anarchy:

Aw, Hail Naw!

I liked this film more than the first installment, which followed an upper-class family ensconced in their high-tech, uber-fortified (or so they thought) McMansion on the night of The Purge. Check out this clip of their lockdown procedure here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbUTbqwKtEE.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this franchise, The Purge is a high-concept near-future horror franchise which centers around an annual event called The Purge, a 12-hour period where all crime, including murder, is officially sanctioned by the new US government, styled as "The New Founding Fathers of America."  And, yeah. If you haven't guessed it already, these New Founding Fathers are way into Gawd, Guns, and Gore--not necessarily in that order. So, basically the films envision a near-future (they're set in the 2020s) right-wing takeover of the US.

The annual Purge was instituted after an economic collapse in the US, and by Constitutional Amendment allows citizens to "Release the Beast" and act out their most base impulses during this 12-hour period, and this supposedly benefits society by creating an extremely low crime rate for the rest of the year, and almost nil unemployment. Plus, several other benefits which remain a bit amorphous and should probably be better conceptualized by director/writer James DeMonaco to tighten things up. I hope he'll get right on that for the 3rd installment.

Fortunately, I can suspend my disbelief, since these types of near-future dystopias are so totally my jam.

Anyway, part 2 takes us from the tony protected neighborhoods of the privileged that was the focus of Part 1, to the every-man-for-himself free-for-all on the gritty streets of working-class and poor Los Angeles. As our window onto this world, the film follows two groups of people who are left shit out of luck and unprotected on the LA streets when The Purge starts. Fortunately for them, they hook up with one bad ass *shutyomouf* (and who is pretty hot IMHO) who ends up protecting them--although he's pretty unconvinced at first and finds these n00bs a huge burden. Plus, they're interfering with his whole reason for being out and ready to Purge (a sub-plot that isn't related to my main point in this entry, so I'm ignoring it).

The guy on the left is Frank Grillo, who plays "Sergeant." He's pretty hot, and takes care of these four inexperienced and hapless people who are left out without protection during The Purge.

There are some predictable moments, and some twists. Overall, though, I think the film makes some relevant social commentary.

**America's gun culture: Duh. This is the huge no-brainer, and the film almost pretty much beats you over the head with this. Guns of all types and calibers permeate the film, and if you haven't already guessed, this is a super-violent flick, so be warned. I don't usually like violence for violence's sake, but I get that this is a dark satire and is purposefully over-the-top in its violent moments. Interestingly, the vast majority of the explicit/graphic violence is gun-related. For example, while you see a lot of people walking around with machetes, we don't see bodies being hacked up.

In fact, it's really interesting how the filmmakers prompt the expectation of the more exotic machete violence, and then subvert those expectations by focusing almost exclusively on the more mundane and real-life gun violence. And I think this is strategic, especially with the fairly recent Sandy Hook probably having been on the writer/director's radar during this movie's creation. There are a few stabbity-stab moments, but these scenes are always from a distance. Where the film lingers in close-up on violence, and savors the blood spatter is when the bullets start flying.

The wet dream of frothing-at-the-mouth NRAers. Plus...'Murica!

In true dystopian fashion, The Purge: Anarchy takes the US's current obsession with guns, and the NRA's rhetoric of "Arm everyone to the teeth" out to their most extreme and logical conclusion: a society where one day a year, everyone just blasts the Hell out of each other. Uh...no thanks.

Big Dick Cheney Clone Guy Is Watching You!

**The rhetoric of the New Founding Fathers of America: Intertwines religion, violence, class/race antagonism, and patriotism in a simplistic way strategically designed to rile up the average working Joe or Jane--and it's mostly Joes who are out Purging. The messaging is very right-wing dog whistle-y, and unfortunately reminiscent of current sound bites that we're getting from GOP candidates such as Trump and Carson. It's amplified here to level eleventy, but it works as social commentary. And makes this film seem not that far displaced into the future or the improbable.

**The metaphor of the rich using up (literally, to death) the poor: Part of the ultimate goal is for population control of "undesireables," which means those who are perceived to be a drain on the social safety net. Meaning, of course, the poors and/or the browns/blacks/non-whites. One scene features an old African-American man with severe health problems, and who is too poor to afford his medicine, making himself a "martyr" to a rich uber-white family whose patriarch resembles Mitt Romney, complete with Blonde Stepford Wife and Shiny Kids with dazzling Chiclet smiles:

Things aren't going to go too well for Grandpa, sad to say. And it probably won't be quick, since the most difficult thing these folks are accustomed to cutting is the roasted lamb their cook presents them at Sunday dinner.

Oh, and being a "martyr" to such a family basically means they have a safe way to Purge behind their protected walls in exchange for transferring $100,000 into the surviving family's bank account (his family are in no way complicit and are devastated to find out he has made this decision).

So, also an indictment against the US healthcare system that passively kills those who can't afford its benefits.

**A quasi-Hunger Games/Hostel/The Running Man entertainment extravaganza where the rich pay poor Purgers to abduct people off the streets and haul them into an uptown auction where the highest bidder pays for the privilege to hunt and kill these hapless victims in a controlled area: More metaphorical commentary on the rich taking advantage of the poor, with a subtext that it's the poors's fault they are in that position. All propped up with a healthy dose of references to Gawd! and 'Murica.

Chauncy, dear, which pearls go best with blood spatter?

**Carmello and his fellow revolutionaries: A predominantly African-American group of anarchists/revolutionaries who protest against The Purge and try to get their fellow citizens to wake up to the fact that the NFFA is simply using frustrated disadvantaged people's anger against themselves as a convenient weapon to thin out their own numbers and make them a more compliant (and less costly) population. Shades of the current #blacklivesmatter movement? Black Panthers? The austerity movement to eliminate social programs and "the welfare state?"

Viva la revolucion, motherfuckers!

Altogether, I enjoyed this film and felt that the social commentary, while sometimes blatant, was thoughtful and relevant. And the whole thing was wrapped up in a package of characters that I started to care about. I'm looking forward to Part 3, which will be a prequel and will take us back to events surrounding the very first Purge.