The Purge (2013)

Official trailer

The Purge is the 2013 James DeMonaco-written-and-directed home invasion thriller starring Ethan Hawke as James Sandin, a wealthy security system salesman defending his family during an annual American holiday in which all crime is temporarily legal. Lena Headey plays his wife Mary Sandin. Adelaide Kane plays their teenage daughter Zoey. Max Burkholder plays their younger son Charlie. Edwin Hodge plays a homeless man whom Charlie admits into the family home, triggering the central conflict with the masked group pursuing him.

Rhys Wakefield plays the Polite Stranger who leads the pursuing group. The film was produced on a budget of approximately three million dollars and grossed approximately ninety million worldwide. The commercial performance produced later franchise development across multiple sequels.

My feelings about this one are split right down the middle.

The premise is a great hook, and the film spends it on a fairly ordinary home invasion picture. Ethan Hawke and Rhys Wakefield keep me watching. The script keeps letting me down whenever it gets close to saying something about the country it’s set in.

The film is a compressed home invasion thriller built on a high-concept dystopian premise. The America it shows has legalized all crime for twelve hours on a designated date each year. The Sandin family takes part in the system passively, by getting rich selling security systems to their neighbors, and I think that’s the sharpest idea in the script.

The conflict develops when their younger son’s decision to admit a fleeing victim into the family home produces direct confrontation with neighbors and pursuers. The film works more effectively as thriller mechanism than as developed social commentary.

The High-Concept Premise

Beyond the actual films, The Purge premise has acquired cultural attention. The concept of an annual day during which all crime is legal has been referenced in later media, political discussion, and cultural commentary much more than the films themselves have generated discussion. The premise works as compressed thought experiment about American social conditions that the films don’t develop with the sophistication the premise invites. The first film handles the premise minimally as setup for home invasion thriller action.

The premise produces logical problems the film never resolves. The economic and social fallout of a legal annual bloodbath would reach far beyond twelve hours, into insurance, mental health care, business and who lives where.

The film treats the premise as background for thriller mechanics, a trade that buys good pacing at the cost of the ideas and loses me. A premise this provocative deserves a script that’s at least curious about it.

Audiences seeking thriller mechanics will find the premise sufficient structure for the action material.

The Hawke Performance

Ethan Hawke’s James Sandin is the film’s central performance and shows real actor commitment to genre material.

The character is established initially as professionally successful suburban father whose specific business depends on the social conditions the Purge produces. Hawke plays the character with suitable moral compromise. The audience can’t endorse Sandin’s professional benefit from the premise the film documents but also experiences his protective response to his family’s specific danger. The performance maintains both responses across the film.

The performance gets the film through material a lesser actor couldn’t have held up. Hawke brings real dramatic weight to home invasion mechanics that most genre leads would have played as simple action, and I like him most when he’s caught between protecting his family and facing what his own success is built on. He’s the strongest thing in a film whose other parts are merely competent.

The Home Invasion Mechanics

The film works primarily as home invasion thriller within the wider Purge premise structure.

The Sandin home’s specific security system, the architectural layout of the residence, and the tactical choices of the pursuing group all function as conventional home invasion mechanics. The audience experiences sustained tension as the pursuing group attempts to compromise the home’s defenses while the Sandin family attempts to defend against incursion. The mechanics work competently across the film.

The home invasion material does get something the premise makes possible. The pursuing group is polite and articulate instead of snarling, and the Polite Stranger presents the whole assault as legitimate participation in a sanctioned holiday. That makes me more uncomfortable than any masked slasher could. You can’t dismiss them as criminals, because under the film’s rules they aren’t. Wakefield’s smile is what stays with me.

Is The Purge worth watching?

As a home invasion thriller, The Purge is competent, built on a premise with real ideas in it that the film never develops. Hawke holds it up, and the Polite Stranger is its best invention.

The premise has drawn more attention than the films ever have. That makes it an odd thing to judge. I’d recommend it to anybody who likes lean, cheap, efficient thrillers, and I’d tell anybody hoping for real social satire to lower their expectations.

It’s a 6 because it does about half of what it sets out to do. The siege is tense, Hawke is better than the material and the Polite Stranger is a creepy invention, but the film raises the most interesting question in its own premise and then refuses to think about it, a dodge that looks worse the longer I think about it. The sequels push the premise further, and the first film is the foundation without necessarily being the best of them.

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