A Genuinely Insightful, Heart—Wrenching And Effective Drama, Well Crafted

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2013)

The cabal against this movie is political. 'The Purge' flopped politically, it flopped for political reasons. A genuinely insightful _dystopian thriller, subtle and bitter, piercing and heart-wrenching, James DeMonaco's movie is clearheaded and sharply thought, convincingly realized, a tale of substitutive atonement, and also of expiation. Much is left unspoken, or suggested. There are hints—about the characters' ways of being. But the undertones—of danger, of eroticism and appeal, etc.—are extremely well managed.
And it is also a story about virtue—the husband's, who is a man of virtue. He speaks about team, about making it as a team. He shows good sense and balance, while the members of his family are unbalanced, either because of age (the kids) or other causes (the wife, 'Mary', is certainly mysterious as a character, intriguing, we see that she drinks, and later she exchanges looks with the hunted person, and the moment when she and their guest part ways has an undeniably erotic undercurrent, she gives in to him). He is betrayed and redeemed. His team fails; the team assembled around him, in his home, will not buy in the virtue he upholds. They betray him. The kids disobey him, his wife flirts with their uninvited guest. He is blamed for everything, for every _disfunction, he always gets the blame—because the security systems aren't unbreakable, because he wants to deliver the fugitive to his hunters, then because he won't, then for giving the boy a gun, etc.. The surrounding soft-heads get all the love. We understand early that most of the characters are humanly undependable, save the husband; the wife is often shown drinking (while preparing the meal, then at dinner), the boy is annoying. In current terms, they are flawed persons. But the husband is flawed also, and here is the twist of the story—because he is cleansed, redeemed, by his virtue. His death is substitutive and expiatory; it is true he kills a youngster, his daughter's lover, he kills in self—defense, and is killed in his turn, cleansed, stabbed, the others kill too, but they get away with it, because they play the game, and so their generosity is a piece of the same puzzle with the murderers and the decent neighbors, they belong to the same world, while the husband, the sales' champion, doesn't, and is killed. And so, the family saves a stranger, tears the ethics, and betrays one of theirs. They make the mistakes, and they are ceaselessly comforted, etc.. The husband, the man who believes in team and in virtue, is betrayed, stabbed, cleansed and redeemed. His team falls apart, they survive, he doesn't, and the meaning of his death isn't that of a failure, but that of redemption—also expiation and substitutive atonement, in a secular understanding.
The actress playing 'Mary', the wife, has a very striking beauty. Her character, 'Mary', is a standout by her drinking and by her beauty.
An aged Hawke does a good role, understated and satisfying, perhaps like a Dillon, or a better Nolte.
Hawke is 42 in this movie, Mrs. Headey is 39.
Perhaps it is not really a dystopia, dystopia as the conventional genre known to us, and perhaps it's not even related to the philosophy of culture; it's not a political conjecture, or a warning, it is a political statement, and indictment, which is why its critics, or many of them, disliked it, and 2022 might be anytime. This is the best of the five movies released this year that I have seen. I have found it mind—blowing. I understand that it annoyed the righteous ilk.