The year is 2022. An American presidential election is in full swing. In the red corner, Minister Edwidge Owens (Kyle Secor) of the New Founding Fathers of America party who have been in office for over quarter of a century thanks to a popular but controversial policy of “purge and purify”, which culminates in an annual 12 hour suspension of law and order to reduce what Ebenezer Scrooge called “the surplus population” aka the poor, the sick, the old, the unemployed. Or what Call Me Dave and the artist formerly known as Gideon used to refer to as “shirkers”.

In the blue corner, Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell), a Clintonesque human rights campaigner whose ardent anti-purge stance is fuelled by the fact she lost her entire family at the hands of machete-wielding henchmen during an attack at her home some 18 years previous. With both candidates neck-and-neck at the polls, Owens makes a game-changing Daily Record “vow” on the eve of the purge and revokes rules, which protect government officials rank 10 or higher – i.e. Roan. So-called “murder tourists” descend upon Washington like a plague of locusts, insurance companies hike up their premiums on those most at risk and America’s national spring cleaning knuckle-dusters into action.

Three plot strands intertwine. Senator Roan’s security guard Leo Barnes (Frank Grillo) tries to protect her from herculean kidnapper Earl Danzinger (Terry Serpico) who has been hired by presidential rival Minister Owens with a view to secure the keys to the White House by slaughtering her at the altar of his local church. Deli-owner Joe Dixon (Mykelti Williamson) and his Hispanic colleague Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria) defend their “slice of the pie” from candyholic Kimmy (Brittany Mirabile) and her pouting posse of feisty females (think Spice Girls on crack). And “Queen Badass” turned Good Samaritan Laney Rucker (Betty Gabriel) patrols the mean streets of downtown Washington in a heavily armoured ambulance to provide healthcare to the wounded and dying.

The first film in the trilogy The Purge was a rhyming dirge, the second The Purge: Anarchy a surprisingly good sequel and this latest instalment by the same writer and director James DeMonaco defies expectations once again with its winning mixture of giggles and gore, politics and suspense. There is as you would expect a fair splattering of blood, but the action sequences are carefully choreographed, more suggestive than gratuitous and so different in style and manner of execution that they avoid the pitfalls of repetition and shock for shock’s sake.

The comic one-liners mostly delivered from the acid tongue of deli owner Joe Dixon are laced with racial undertones: “It’s purge night. You don’t sneak up on black people.” And the extremist views of Minister Owens bares a striking resemblance to The Donald whose poisonous remarks about building a wall along the Mexican border and administering “some sort of punishment” on women who have abortions will hopefully be purged from politics come Election Day. The pace could be quicker, particularly in the middle third, and the plot streamlined by reducing the frequency and length of cat and mouse chases, but The Purge: Election Year is an enjoyable addition to a lucrative franchise which as the ending suggests is set up for a frenzied fourth act brought about by the proposed abolition of the annual killing spree. There will be blood.

Trailer by: Universal Pictures

[imdb id=tt4094724]

Peter Callaghan
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