Last summer’s surprise hit, The Purge, was something that ended up being better than it should’ve been. Using a premise that the United States of America has a yearly 12-hour event where all crimes are legal in order for the population to vent their frustrations was an interesting one. The fact that this event was cooked up by what the film calls America’s Second Founding Fathers was a nice touch.
The film itself started well enough but ended up becoming another take on the home invasion trope. At least, the box office success of the film meant a sequel was quickly greenlit. What we have with The Purge: Anarchy takes the original film’s premise and goes much wider in scope and scale. Instead of the film using a home invasion premise we now go the “Most Dangerous Game” route. If we’re to believe what the latest trailer is showing it’s that the Purge Event might be something cooked up by those rich and powerful.
We also have the very awesome Frank Grillo channeling his inner Frank Castle and using the Purge event to find those who killed his son in the year’s previous Purge.
This sequel has me more excited for it than I probably should, but if the film pulls off half of what this trailer promises then I’ll be satisfied.
Oh, if The Purge was real then people better not be trying to give me a visit because I’m ready.
Through the Shattered Lens 
I really enjoyed “The Purge” a lot more than I was expecting to — especially given that it came out in the wake of the Trayvon Martin ruling, I felt like it was topical, timely, and extremely well-done. I’m looking forward to the sequel, even if it continues the unfortunate societal demonization of anarchy as a concept by linking it with violence, disorder, and basically everything bad in the world, when history shows us just the opposite to be true. That’s one of the reasons I remain so fundamentally disappointed with the “V For Vendetta” film adaptation — rather than have the balls to stick with the comic’s portrayal of V as a principled anarchist, they chose to make him a dull “freedom fighter” instead, and missed the opportunity to open up a wide-scale discussion of anarchism and perhaps even redeem it from its much-maligned status.
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I think most people — not just Hollywood — misunderstands what the concept of anarchy really means.
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Definitely, and movie titles like this don’t help that perception any.
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My friend Jim (better known to TSL readers as frequent comment-maker Doc Zeke) and I refer to that film as being “V for Vapid.”
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But it does pull off a line of dialogue from the comics that I know wholeheartedly agree with: “A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.”
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Sums it up pretty well!
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