“I ain’t thinkin’ bout nothing but waffles and pussy.” Fucking Gold.
The first Purge movie was a pretty standard home invasion movie, with a neat world premise it ultimately did nothing with. But, (And you might not believe me) its sequel The Purge: Anarchy is a really good action movie. It not only follows through on the promise of the original premise, but it’s also basically the best Punisher movie out there.
The Purge: Anarchy set up Frank Grillo as our hero and he carried that movie. He returns in The Purge: Election Year, but he’s helped out by a new and much stronger supporting cast this time around. That’s a big part of what makes this such a good movie. This is the good kind of sequel that takes what worked from the last movie, improves on some of the weakness and just blows out the story so that it feels sensibly bigger.
The biggest difference is that the dialogue writing is surprisingly improved from last time. There’s just a lot of good character banter and memorable lines. Characters stand out and all feel unique and important to what’s going on; for the most part. I also just like them. In Anarchy Grillo had a bunch of useless fools he had to try and save, but this time, along with raised stakes, he also gets a host of competent allies who can handle themselves.
For the most part this kind of follows the formula the previous movie laid out, although with a little more purpose. After the events of the first movie, Grillo has now become the head of security for a Senator who’s running for president to try and end the purge. But for purge night this year the powers that be waive the exception for politicians so that they can assassinate her. It goes pretty much how you’d expect.
A big key to this franchise is that because it’s action movies backdoored into what started as a horror franchise it’s the rare American action movie that gets to go all the way with its violence. It’s refreshing. The action isn’t as good as the last movie overall, but all the other improvements make up for that.
This is just a fun, funny, engaging action movie that takes its ridiculous, silly premise just seriously enough. I really liked it.
