America's drastic solution to crime

Rating: 7/10 (31 May 2013)

The year is 2022, not too distantly into the future and America's crime levels are at an all time low, as is unemployment and the economic problems it has been suffering are almost a bad memory. The drastic solution which produced these results is something called The Purge. Each year, for 12 hours from 7pm to 7am, all crime is declared legal and the police and security services are suspended. In short, for 12 hours, America has become a state of anarchy.
Cue: idealised American family the Sandins. Father Ethan Hawke is a security system salesman, Mother Lena Headley is a homemaker and mother. Along with their 2 children, Charlie and Zoe, this family seem the ideal. They all live in an exclusive community in beautiful, massive homes and surrounded by gossipy neighbours.
The film begins just shortly before The Purge. Ethan is coming home and Lena is preparing a family meal and chatting with neighbours. Everything is as it should be. Nothing afoot. The couple's family is also joined briefly by Zoe's older boyfriend, who her father disapproves of. A family meal erupts into a feast of rude comments then the idealised family go into the communal security room and wait for the sirens to go off, signalling the beginning of the yearly Purge.
As the family home becomes a Sandin fortress, Charlie wanders around and tries to settle down. Zoe makes out with her boyfriend and both adults talk about the benefits of The Purge, safe in the knowledge, that they won't be affected by its problems.
All is well, until Charlie the son spots a fugitive pleading for help within the community. He's in deep distress, being shot at by a crowd of 20 something masked anarchists complete with smart suits, white dresses and horrid masks. Charlie decides to help the man and disarms the fortress system to let him in.
Thus does the dynamic of the story change. Both parents don't know what to do with the stranger. To make matters instantly worse, his assailants are right behind him, a bunch of masked anarchists hungry for his blood, lead by a smartly dressed young man. Said young man wants them to hand over the fugitive so that he can be slaughtered and hey can be left alone. Easy choice really?
So begins a real tale of moral dilemma on a par with films like Straw Dogs, Panic Room and The Strangers, a French movie on similar lines. Anarchists continue to taunt the family and ask them not too politely to turn 'the swine over. Family struggles trying to tie him up, preparing to throw him back to his assailants. It is at this point that the film descends into familiar territory. Still, matters not. It is a good idea which may have been better added to but doesn't suffer for not straying away from its main premise. There is an element, particularly at the end where you realise you don't know who your friends are.