Assault on Precinct 13 (AP13) first published by Movie Gazette It is a story that has been told many times before: in the Seventies, Hollywood’s studio system gave way to an auteur-oriented movement embracing creativity and the counterculture, and producing some of the most innovative and confronting films ever to have emerged from the United States….
The Purge: Election Year first published by Little White Lies 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, at least initially, of the vast gulf between America’s over-entitled haves and victimised have-nots, but was confined to, and…
Review first appeared in Sight & Sound, August 2013 Synopsis: 2022, America. On the night of the annual Purge, a legalised “countrywide catharsis” of mayhem and murder, security salesman James Sandin, wife Mary and children Zoey and Charlie lock down. Zoey’s boyfriend Henry is killed confronting a disapproving James. Meanwhile, a posse of local bourgeois…
Review first published by GrolschFilmWorks. In a near-future America where the crime rate is at a record low, it is the night of the ‘Purge’ – an annual 12-hour period in which laws are temporarily revoked and murder is sanctioned, even deemed patriotic. This “countrywide catharsis” is also in effect a state-sponsored culling of the…