A waste of a good concept

Rating: 3/10 (5 April 2015)

The year is 2022 and the Annual Purge is about to commence; The Purge legalises crime for 12 hours and is part of a government initiative which has been put in place to allow individuals to vent out any frustrations that they have been building up over the last 12 months. Ironically one of the main reasons that The Purge has been put in place is to reduce crime as a whole. However, James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) and his family find themselves on the receiving end of The Purge when a homeless man (Edwin Hodge) takes refuge in their home and they refuse to release him to a gang of murderers who the homeless man had managed to escape from. When the gang gain entry to the Sandin's home, the family find themselves in a life or death battle with the murderous gang.
Writer James DeMonaco has come up with a fantastic concept here and with more thought and care this could have been a truly brilliant film. Sadly it wastes its own potential and for the most part it's down to the moronic screenplay. Here's a few examples;
There's a man running round the streets shouting for help (in the middle of The Purge) claiming that someone is chasing him (even though there's no-one in sight). The Sandin's son decides to let him in on the strength of him needing help. Not only was that stupid, but it's just totally unbelievable - the son didn't know who this guy was - for all he knew he could have had a grudge against someone in his family or may have just wanted to rob them because they're rich. That's just one example of stupidity.
The next example of stupidity belongs to the murderous gang and the homeless man; if we read between the lines we can assume that this gang targeted the homeless guy because they see him as a 'purge' on society (no pun intended), but again the attack on him seems rather random. This then brings me to my next problem, if you're a murderous gang of people who have 12 hours to commit whatever crime you wish to any individual you wish would you waste your precious time standing outside someone's house waiting for a family to release a random 'homeless guy' and go to all the trouble to acquire specialist equipment in order to break into said house and get said homeless guy OR would you go out and just find another homeless guy or commit further heinous crimes. Surely if they've had 12 months to think of what crimes they'd commit during The Purge they wouldn't have just decided that they wanted to kill one homeless guy. It just didn't make any sense. I could perhaps understand the gang wanting to see it through if they were a group of work colleagues and they were targeting a boss or fellow work colleague that they hated - something to make what they're doing seem believable, but all that effort for a random homeless guy? I don't think so. I also didn't understand the point of the gang wearing masks. Was that supposed to be scary? It wouldn't matter if they were identified as the crime was legal when they were committing it.
The most disappointing thing about this film is that it felt like a really big missed opportunity; it would have been nice to have had a bit of commentary on the subject and I think it would have been a better film if the central plot would have focused on someone who had it in for the Sandin family or someone who has a reason to resent someone within the family (having the film focus on Sandin's daughter's boyfriend trying to kill Sandin would have been a more believable plot line). The only other reasonably believable aspect of this film was Sandin's neighbours wanting revenge against the family, but even this aspect isn't given a lot of focus.
Whilst it started strong, it sadly never built upon its excellent premise and pretty much wasted the potential that it had. A very big disappointment.