The Purge: Elec­tion Year

In 2013, writer/​director James DeMona­co unleashed The Purge, where­in for one night a year, all crimes (includ­ing mur­der) go unpun­ished. This killer premise made much satir­i­cal play of the vast gulf between America’s over-enti­tled haves and vic­timised have-nots, but was con­fined to, and wast­ed on, a home inva­sion sce­nario. For­tu­nate­ly the first sequel, 2014’s The Purge: Anar­chy, took this high con­cept from gat­ed sub­ur­bia to the mean streets of Los Ange­les, amp­ing up both the dystopi­an alle­go­ry and the B‑movie exu­ber­ance. And now The Purge: Elec­tion Year brings its action thrills to the very heart of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, Wash­ing­ton DC, while its release has been care­ful­ly timed to coin­cide with an actu­al elec­tion year in which many of the film’s wilder spec­u­la­tions seem ever clos­er to being realised.

For almost two decades, the elite New Found­ing Fathers of Amer­i­ca have been draw­ing their pow­er and prof­it from an annu­al erad­i­ca­tion of the under­class, and pub­licly con­ceal their real agen­da in an all-too-famil­iar pop­ulist mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of reli­gious and egal­i­tar­i­an lan­guage. Now lib­er­al Sen­a­tor Char­lie Roan (Eliz­a­beth Mitchell), whose entire fam­i­ly was killed in an ear­li­er Purge, is mak­ing a bid for the Pres­i­den­cy on a plat­form of abol­ish­ing the year­ly insti­tu­tion for good. Recog­nis­ing a threat to their sta­tus quo, the NFFA use the Purge as cov­er for send­ing a pro­fes­sion­al hit squad against Char­lie – but they do not count on the deter­mi­na­tion of Anarchy’s vengeance-seek­ing, griz­zled police sergeant Leo Barnes (Frank Gril­lo), now a secret ser­vice agent, to pro­tect Char­lie at all costs from any­thing that might stop her reformist ideas dead in their tracks.

Elec­tion Year is essen­tial­ly a chase movie, as kick­ass Leo escorts Char­lie through a hell­ish urban nightscape of teen psy­chotics, ​‘mur­der tourists’, lurid­ly cos­tumed packs and state-spon­sored killers. On the way, they are helped by an age­ing deli own­er (Mykelti Williamson), a migrant work­er (Joseph Julian Soria), a triage vol­un­teer (Bet­ty Gabriel), a rev­o­lu­tion­ary activist (Edwin Hodge) and a gang of Crips – all notably pro­le­tar­i­an African-Amer­i­cans or His­pan­ics from the streets, in con­trast with the all-male, all-white, super-priv­i­leged and clois­tered cabal of the NFFA.

Accord­ing­ly DeMonaco’s film gets to have it every which way. Like the slaugh­ter-hap­py school­girl Kim­my (Brit­tany Mirabile) who is fetishised as eye can­dy by Jacques Jouffret’s leer­ing cam­era but also more than will­ing to break in, burn and kill for her con­fec­tionery, Elec­tion Years gets to have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand, it is a well-paced amal­gam of ​‘pure genre’ ges­tures cribbed from The War­riors, Mad Max 2 and espe­cial­ly John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (DeMona­co penned the screen­play for 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13 remake), and invites us to rev­el in its trashy B‑movie rou­tines and card­board hero­ics. On the oth­er hand, it is a jour­ney through a divid­ed and polit­i­cal­ly polarised Amer­i­ca where ultra­vi­o­lence is always hot on the tail of errant ideology.