The Purge: Election Year, 2016.
Written and Directed by James DeMonaco.
Starring Frank Grillo, Elizabeth Mitchell, Mykelti Williamson, Joseph Julian Soria, Betty Gabriel, Terry Serpico, Edwin Hodge, and Kyle Secor.
SYNOPSIS:
Years after sparing the man who killed his son, former police sergeant Barnes has become head of security for Senator Charlie Roan, a Presidential candidate targeted for death on Purge night due to her vow to eliminate the Purge.
Blah blah Trump blah blah satire blah blah timely blah blah capitalism blah blah allegory. To announce The Purge: Election Year as satire would be to call for its very death knell. Amidst the broadly comical attempts at playing to the current news cycle of mass hysteria, director DeMonaco seem to masturbate himself silly to the very nature of violence. For every lame attempt at mirroring socio-economic issues, DeMonaco throws in sequences of scantily dressed teenagers trying there hardest to murder for a Yorkie.
Sentient fist Frank Grillo returns as Leo Barnes, now working as security detail for patron saint presidential nominee Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) who-18 years after her family were murdered-now calls for the end of purge night. This angers the New Founding Fathers of America who bring it upon themselves to bring an abrupt end to her campaign. All this as deli owner Joe (Mykelti Willamson) and his sort of family try there hardest to defend their shop against a gang of angry teenagers.
DeMonaco revels in the anarchy of it all, finding himself distracted by moments of violence in favour of any actual characters who all resemble the broadest possible stereotypes; the immigrant with an adoration of the US, the saintly politician, the grizzled hero with a shady past. There’s a seriousness to these characters that jars awkwardly against the silliness of the whole affair. And it is bafflingly silly. A group of teenagers who were denied a chocolate bar return to the deli in a car covered in fairy lights, blaring out a Miley Cyrus ditty, wearing prom dresses soaked in blood, waving machine guns and industrial mechanical equipment, for the sake of a Toffee Crisp.
Where its predecessors had a populist subversiveness to them, Election Year seems to confine itself to absolute idiocy, going so far as to err towards the politics of the God-awful NRA. Thankfully the gob-smacking absurdity takes it past the point of any actual observable satire. At a certain point, its futile to draw lines between modern politics and a film in which a priest manically waves a machine gun at a presidential nominee who just kicked her opponent in the nether regions.
The script, also written by James DeMonaco, is unforgiving in its broad strokes, forcing Mykelti Williamson to spout off one-liners as if stepping off the set of an exploitation flick. Elizabeth Mitchell, playing maybe the most unlikely presidential nominee, seems baffled by the whole affair. Every conversation ends with an upward inflection, every look seems to be that of utter confusion.
The Purge: Election Year hasn’t a clue as to what it’s supposed to be. It wants so desperately to be a John Carpenter-lite exploitation flick while trying it’s hardest to feel politically relevant. No one resembles actual people, threats are entirely disposable and there’s a total lack of dramatic complexity. The fingerprints of Tarantino stain every frame with that vulgar, arrogance he seems so proud of. If this is satire, it’s satire for Generation Trump.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Thomas Harris
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published August 24, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
