The Purge: Anarchy

Last year's The Purge was a good premise backed up by a boring slog of a movie. This sequel, delivered just a year later, is a better movie. Now, I'm not saying it's a good movie, for it is not. It's a better movie with a lot of problems. It starts mere hours before the annual Purge, a one-day holiday where citizens of the United States are allowed to put their cherished arsenals to use. Yes, murder is legal for a day in this universe, although certain types of explosives are strictly prohibited. This is sort of the Magnolia or Crash of Purge movies, in that we see a lot of story lines involving multiple characters eventually converging. Frank Grillo plays the most interesting of those characters, a vengeful man gathering up some heavy artillery and taking to the streets on Purge night. The whole affair feels like a bit of a John Carpenter rip-off, and not the good John Carpenter, but the fair-to-middling John Carpenter. Now, that's better than watching Ethan Hawke mope around his house and having tense conversations through his front door for an entire film, but it still doesn't feel fresh.