THE PURGE: ANARCHY

America, 2023. Introductory onscreen text informs us that crime is at an all-time low, while fewer people live below the poverty line each year. And it's all thanks to "Purge Night".

Those who saw 2013's THE PURGE will know that said night is an annual event in which all emergency services take leave and the cops turn a blind eye, while people spend twelve hours doing what the fuck they want ... settling scores, committing crimes etc. Radical hardly begins to cover it ... and tonight it's about to take place for the 6th time.

In this sequel, the action centres on Chicago. As huge billboard-sized TV screens broadcast the image of 'New Founding Father' Donald Talbot (Dale Dye) onto the streets so he can extol the virtues of "The Purge" to his people, the ordinary folk it affects busy themselves finishing work and rushing home before the darkness comes. "Stay safe", folk tell each other.

Waitress Eva (Carmen Ejogo) hurries home to her ailing elderly father and her pretty daughter Cali (Zoe Soul), inhabitants of a poor neighbourhood who subscribe to the ranting of online rebel Carmelo (Michael K Williams) who insists the Purge is all about the government controlling the population and making money out of having the poor kill each other off.

Elsewhere, Shane (Zach Gilford) and Liz (Kiele Sanchez) are driving across the city to give his sister some bad news when they run into a pack of masked hoodlums mere minutes before the Purge's "commencement". Shortly afterwards, Shane's car grinds to a halt and he realises that one of the hoodies sabotaged it. He and Liz have no alternative but to flee across the city on foot ... with their masked assailants in hot pursuit.

In the meantime, loner Sergeant (Frank Grillo) takes to the mean streets in his car, despite pleas to the contrary from his ex-wife. He has a score to settle...

Inevitably, all of the above eventually collide outside Eva's home and the scene is set for a series of tense showdowns.

Whereas the original film focused on one household, effectively turning into a home invasion movie as soon as its initial exposition was over, this sequel opens up the premise to the streets of Chicago. In doing so, writer-director James DeMonaco deals with a greater number of characters than in the preceding instalment while challenging the politics behind the central conceit.

It works for the most part. Despite having more characters to flesh out, DeMonaco keeps the action taut and frequent, eliciting suspense through adroit editing and restless handheld camerawork. Once everyone's been introduced, the film settles into a latter half peppered with almost continual chase scenes through the city's darkest corner. With the help of big-budget production design and a solid score, it all comes across as stylishly effective.

Performances are good across the board, although a lot of the dialogue is stock action movie fare. Sergeant is perhaps the least satisfying character despite being the most enigmatic: his Mad Max persona soon gives way to daft tough-guy dialogue and a tiresome habit of evading questions about what's provoked him to take to the streets on Purge Night.

Whereas THE PURGE was a horror-thriller, this is more squarely based in "action thriller" territory a la early John Carpenter - which, of course, is no bad thing. The result is a highly stylised, muscular and enjoyable 80s throwback that nevertheless falters due to a lack of standout characters and the fact that the combat sequences couldn't done with having a little more bite.

Universal's UK DVD presents the film in its original 2.40:1 aspect ratio. 16x9 enhanced and fully uncut, ANARCHY looks spectacular even in standard definition.

Warm, rich colours, deep contrasts and sterling levels of detail throughout ensure this film plays exactly how you'd expect a studio picture from 2014 to. If anything, it's possibly a little too slick-looking for its thriller purposes. But that aside, this presentation really isn't to be faulted.

Audio is provided in a stirring English 5.1 mix. A fine balance between music, dialogue and bombastic action sequence sound design makes sure that there are no qualms to be had here. There are also optional dubbed mixes in French, German, Hindi and Turkish. Oh, and an English audio-descriptive service is on hand too for the sight-impaired.

Upon load-up, the disc comes equipped with an impressive array of optional subtitles: English, French, Netherlands, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Turkish and Hindi.

Prior to reaching the static main menu page, we get forced trailers for OUIJA, DRACULA UNTOLD, LUCY, NOT SAFE FOR WORK and AS ABOVE SO BELOW.

Once we're into the disc's main area, we get a static scene selection menu allowing access to the film via 16 chapters.

Bonus features are non-existent on the DVD. This is surprising, given that this is a relatively high profile genre release. What Universal have done though, no doubt frustratingly for fans of the film who have yet to make the leap to HD, is furnish the blu-ray version of this release with extras.

In fairness, they sound pretty meagre: a collection of deleted scenes and a featurette entitled "Behind the Anarchy". I can't really comment as I haven't seen these but, it doesn't sound like we're missing out on a great deal.

As mentioned above, THE PURGE: ANARCHY is also available on blu-ray. In addition, it can be bought as part of a 2-film set which pairs it with its predecessor.

Review by Stuart Willis