Sadly The First Purge
is the weakest franchise entry to date. Of particular disappointment is the
squandered opportunity for some ‘on point’ comparisons between the world today
and the politics of The Purge. But no, McMurray is almost
obscenely keen to jettison anything narratively that gets in the way of a bit
of gung ho action.
So as the title rather unsubtly suggests, The First Purge takes us back to the
origins of the ultimate Mischief Night, where for 12 hours every year all
policing of and in the US is suspended, leaving inhabitants to roam free all
night, settling scores and causing mayhem with whatever weapons come to hand.
We learn a bit about the rise of The Purge’s creators, the New Founding Fathers
of America, an ultra-right wing party that capture the mood of a nation in a
severe economic slump, and who want to, well, make America great again. Sound
familiar? Of course in 2013 when the first movie came out, the Donald was a
shadowy figure on the electoral horizon, but the series has lost no time - up
to now at least - in drawing more and more comparisons between Purge world and
our own (and lest we forget, as I was remarking to someone at the screening I
attended, that it’s only seven years since Blighty had its own Purge moment, with impromptu city riots that were extinguished as quickly as they erupted).
The opportunity to explore the political and social development
of The Purge – as an experiment dreamt up by the NFFA to reduce crime, initially
confined to Staten Island, and enabled by paying volunteers $5000 each to
participate – is largely ignored, and instead McMurray focuses on some almost
shockingly stereotypical black characters – drug dealer, put upon nice girl
with bad boyfriend etc - to tell the story of poverty stricken but basically
good people caught up in bad government policy.
The rest of the plot is woefully thin, with characters having
to get from A to B to escape lots of people waving weapons but presenting very
little actual threat; indeed one of the more dramatic moments revolves around a
pre Purge ‘dis’ between two characters – one a junkie (of course) - which
signposts their eventual face off once they have weapons in their hands.
This isn’t to write that The First Purge is…well my next word was going to be boring, but
actually it was in parts. It’s leaden and ploddy, with lots of action but
nowhere to go with it. What’s more criminal (pun intended) is that the dynamics
of The Purge – so interestingly investigated in the previous three movies – have been cast aside as the most inconvenient of McGuffins, so that McMurray could clear
the stage for scene after scene of inconsequential action.
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