The Purge (2013)

It's the rare film that allows you to feel yourself physically getting dumber as you watch it. I suppose that's an impressive feat to have accomplished, as "The Purge" managed to do, but it's still not something I would be too proud of were I the makers of it. After all that puts them in league with "Transformers Revenge of The Fallen" and "Howard the Duck" in terms of creating something so apocalyptically stupid that you can feel the synapses in your brain firing back on themselves and imploding while it's playing.

I get it, you know. I'm not dense. I understand metaphor and the concept of a morality play. I can see what "The Purge" is trying to say: That the wealthy in this country have no concept of apathy for those who do not in turn posses wealth, and in fact they would rather them all die to relieve the haves of the horrible strain of having to lend any kind of reluctant, kicking and screaming help to the have-nots. And in the end, we are all horrible animals that will rip each other to pieces given the slightest provocation or opportunity, the odds of which go up exponentially the more wealth you have. I get it, "The Purge." It wasn't difficult to catch since you're about as stealthy with it as an air-horn in a library.

And you know what? Maybe they're right. There is probably something of a point to be made there. The wealth gap in this country is inexcusable, and there is such a massive focus on what is good for a microscopic fraction at the top that the surging masses of everyone else below them gets completely ignored.

But for crying rivers of blood, there is such a thing as subtlety. The best tales of social commentary don't shove symbolism and morals in your face in outrageous over-the-top antics that come across closer to parody than parallel. They are more sneaky with it. What they don't do is create an America where once every year, in an effort to cull the lower class/poor people/unemployed, for 12 hours all crime is completely legal in an activity called "The Purge." This, naturally, means that everyone with the money to have one barricades themselves inside their massive fortress of a home, while everyone else who doesn't have that luxury immediately goes out and kills anyone they can get their hands on in an orgy of blood, since that's what people like to do. Actually a number of rich people go out and hunt poorer people because hey, what are they gonna do? NOT kill someone? That's what any normal person would like to do, right? That's typical healthy behavior yeah? I mean, they're poor. It's not like they're human beings or anything.

Wow. That's so sneaky that I barely saw what you did there.

The amount of stupid contained in the description on the back of the DVD alone is enough to make my head hurt. That's just a dumb, DUMB plot. How in the hell was that even supposed to have come to pass in the film's far future setting of 2022? Did the Tea Party really become that powerful in that time frame? Actually I don't even think they'd go so far as to implement a policy of genocide on the poor, even though they'd probably like the thought even if they wouldn't say it out loud. I just don't think they'd be able to collect the votes to pass that particular legislation through the Senate. Or is this the end result of the Affordable Health Care Act? Is this what Ted Cruz is talking about when he says that's going to be the end of America? Are we going to starting Purging in less than a decade? I guess that's how it starts: First you have people getting health care, then soon we're all piles of bodies in the streets. Man, I had no idea.

Thanks, Obama.

Ethan Hawke is James, a successful maker of home security systems who has made like a good hard-working capitalist and made a lot of money selling his wares to other families on his block, all of whom live in mansions the size of a damn football field. Naturally he's got quite the elaborate setup when it comes to his own home security. This comes in handy when, during the Purge, his son Charlie (Max Burkholder) lets in a bloody homeless man who remains nameless throughout (Edwin Hodge) in an effort to save him from a mob led by a likewise nameless psycho in a mask (Rhys Wakefield). Psycho kindly informs James that unless he hands over the homeless guy, they'll bust in and kill James and his entire family.

That's the setup, but most of the film is following James and the rest of his family around in the dark as they attempt to navigate their impossibly large house in an effort to find the guy so they can throw him to the wolves. They try and work in some mild tension like it's attempting to be a horror film, but all it boils down to is someone suddenly appearing behind someone else accompanied by an orchestra sting like it's the scariest thing in the world, a cliche which is so transparent and worn out that at this point it's really no more frightening than a sneeze.

Pictured above - Every crap horror movie you've ever seen.

At no point did I give two craps about anyone in this story. James is a bland character with no personality to speak of. His wife Mary (Lena Headey) is a hypocritical harpy who condemns James for choosing to protect his family, calling him a terrible person when he agrees to let the stranger die so that they all may live, saying bullcrap like "What have we become?" when she's supported the Purge for years. I'm not saying that's the right choice for him to make, but that's because there IS no right choice to make in that situation. That's a lose-lose scenario, and he took the path that most people would: The one that keeps his family alive. That's an understandable decision for James to make, but Mary basically calls him a monster for making it. But that's not to say she's above expecting him to kill when the walls come down and the masked people start pouring in. Oh no. Then she's all about him becoming a killer. What a hypocrite. I can't stand characters like that. I wouldn't have minded as much if we weren't obviously meant to be on her side.

And naturally, the film ends with the rich neighbors coming to help James and his family, only to turn on them because they wanted to be the ones to kill them. Why is that? Well, because he's successful and made money off of them, that's why. Of course, this makes no sense since they're all rich anyway and becoming more rich would probably be applauded in that particular circle, especially considering that it's the poor people who are supposed to die according to this idiotic premise, but hey why would the movie start being not-stupid at the end? So the homeless guy ends up saving those who are still alive, and the Purge ends with the neighbors meekly walking back home as if everything isn't going to be horribly awkward from now on.

I pose a serious question: Have you ever seen a more punchable face? This is our villain, people...

I most admit that this film made me feel physically bad, and not in the way I believe the filmmakers were intending, either. I was so enraged at the notion that every single person, not matter who they are or where they're from, is inherently a psychopath who would gladly kill someone else if only they had half a chance. I'm no starry-eyed optimist or anything, but I generally believe that while the average person at their core may be selfish, they do not wish harm on others under normal circumstances, and the average person would probably not find the prospect of killing an attractive one.

And that's on top of it making me sick to my stomach due to a horrible script, terrible acting, and lack of any tension, horror or suspense. By the way, it must be said that the absolute fastest way to ensure that the audience knows that you don't really give a rat's ass about actually being scary is to simply slap stupid masks on the villains and have them prance around and shriek like a bunch of babbling lunatics. That doesn't make me afraid of them. That makes me wonder why they haven't been locked up because they're clearly insane and could not function in any kind of society, no matter how messed up it is.

Yeah, "The Purge," I played "BioShock," too. That was a good game. Stop ripping it off because you suck at it.

You know what "The Purge" is? I'll bet this is what paranoid, Right Wing fringe maniacs thinks everyone else thinks of them. It's like looking into Alex Jones' head. That's a scary place to be, and I feel like I need a shower.

For crying out loud, the trailer plays "America the Beautiful." FREAKING. SUBTLE.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I hated "The Purge." I hated, hated, hated, hated it. This movie would be laughed off as a pathetic failed attempt at a third-rate home invasion movie in the best of scenarios, but the fact that it's trying to say something but being terribly inept at doing so sinks it even lower into the hole that it dug itself with it's blunt instrument of clumsy allegory. This is a terrible film whose only market is vapid high school girls who might think it's really "deep" because they're stupid and "scary" because they've never seen an actual horror movie in their life.

Red Dawn (2012)

I love action movie cheese, whether it's "Top Gun" or "Point Break" or anything starring Dolph Lundgren. But there do exist a few films deemed classics in the "badly awesome" category that I am not a fan of. One of those is the original "Red Dawn." I know it occupies a special place in many hearts, but for some reason I could never get behind it.

There's a lot of reasons to like it to be sure, be it the amazing cast or the stunningly absurd plot that screams out for high-octane action movie shenanigans, but I honestly slept through most of "Red Dawn." I have a hard time pointing to exactly the reason why, but there's something about that movie that just makes me drift off into a stupor worthy of post-Thanksgiving dinner. Considering that there's a calculated 2.23 acts of violence every minute of the film (seriously, at the time it made the Guinness Book of World Records), it's quite an accomplishment to make something that action-packed boring, but hey there it is.

I always found "Red Dawn" inexplicably dull, and because of that I didn't like it. Well, that and it was really creepy watching it knowing that there are people in America who look at it like it's a precognitive documentary. Honestly it made me feel a little queasy because it was like looking at the world through the lenses of their paranoid, gun-nut, conspiracy theory laden crazy goggles. It's an unsettling feeling.

That's a thing I want to watch: Alex Jones' spank material.

So sure. Remake it. Whatever. At this point I'm not even going to rant about them remaking everything. At least it's a remake of a movie I don't care about. It could be much worse. And when a movie has been sitting on the shelf for 3 years after being completed (true story, it was shot in 2009), you know you're dealing with some quality material, am I right?

This is going to suck, isn't it?

Well, the answer is unfortunately "Yes, it did suck." This is not a good movie. Not even by the standards of unnecessary remakes is it a decent film. It's barely coherent in its narrative, the plot does the impossible and is even dumber than the original, all but one of the characters are essentially walking cardboard cutouts spouting dialogue equivalent to a dog gnawing on a squeaky toy, and the admittedly plentiful action is squandered by the watered-down PG-13 rating. I would ask how something this easy is messed up so much, but honestly there wasn't much to work with to begin with, so I can't even be that mad about it. It's not like I'm surprised it sucked. I'm just tired.

All that being said, I still liked it better than the original. At least I stayed awake this time.

You know what the deal is at this point with the story, and little has changed from the original in that respect. Very early on, a foreign army invades America, and with a pillaging that would make the beginning of any fantasy movie proud, the townsfolk of Spokane, Washington are promptly slaughtered and interned. Escaping from the invader's clutches is a group of high schoolers who decide to flee into the woods and fight the good fight, calling themselves The Wolverines and eventually throwing a big enough wrench into the enemy's plan as to suggest eventual victory in the near future. Since "Red Dawn" doesn't feel the need to have an actual ending.

Cower in fear, North Korea. She's going to make duck-lips at you.

In the original film the invaders were the Russians. And in 1984, I'm sure that made some sense. In the remake, it's North Korea. It was supposed to be China, but when MGM decided they didn't want to make them mad, since it might eat into the box office sales in...well, China I guess, they changed it to North Korea, a place where barely anyone has electricity let alone a movie theater to go to. It's not even worth it to mention how stupid the idea that they could successfully invade us is. But I'll still say it. That's stupid.

The whole invasion is explained to be possible because of "a new weapon" that destroys all communication or something, kind of like an EMP, except North Korea's stuff is immune due to a MacGuffin they needed for a third act plot device. Of course, the film never explains how all the radios and TVs and communication that was not protected is still working after the invasion, but there I go nitpicking "stuff that doesn't matter" like the buzz-kill I am.

Our main heroes de jour are played by Chris Hemsworth (pre-"Thor"), Josh Hutcherson (pre-"Hunger Games"), and Josh Peck (post-proving he's a terrible actor). There's also Jeffery Dean Morgan and Brett Cullen who show up to throw some acting chutzpah at us, but they are extremely underused. So overall the cast is alright, but then again, among The Wolverines we've also got Adrianne Palicki, who played Wonder Woman on the failed TV reboot, and Isabel Lucas, who was the Decepticon in "Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen" who could turn into a human (since Decepticons can do that now), so I guess we've got to pick our battles here.

"I'm the only reason you're watching this, aren't I?"

When the cast is good, it's pretty darn good. Morgan and Cullen are of course great, but Hemsworth is carrying the movie nearly the entire time, being the best actor of the main cast by as far as Thor could chuck Mjolnir. It also helps that he is given the most interesting character, being a soldier recently back from the war who has some issues, but obviously becomes indispensable when North Korea attacks. Hutcherson is okay, but he has the same problem most of the cast has, being that his character is so anonymous that he kind of fades into the background, and it's a struggle to even remember his name. Even Will Yun Lee, playing the essentially nameless Big Bad doesn't really do much besides get killed via impossible convenience, although he is fairly intimidating.

But when the cast is bad, it becomes borderline unwatchable. The worst offender of this is Josh Peck as Hemsworth's younger brother. I knew I was going to hate this character the instant he showed up as a hotdogging quarterback who ends up costing his team the game because he felt he could win it single-handedly. He was mistaken. And true to that character trait of selfish impulsiveness (which is about the only one he has), he ends up getting one of his friends killed at a later point in the film. I thought that perhaps that may have proven to be a learning experience for him, but nope. Not happening. He doesn't learn anything and ends the movie the same character he started as despite suffering horrendous loss. What a character arc.

And Josh Peck is such an unlikable actor that it really is nails on a chalkboard for me to even look at the damn guy. And it took me the longest time to place where I'd seen him before. At first I thought he was that mattress selling prick from "Devil," but then I finally realized where I'd seen him before.

IT'S THAT LITTLE TURD SMUGGLER FROM "ATM."

Of course it is. Why wouldn't that be the actor they got for "Red Dawn?" He's only the most soul-punchingly obnoxious and irritating actor I've seen since Ryan Reynolds or Dane Cook. Sounds like a great time. Make him one of the heroes. In fact, make him essentially the main character, as he's one of the few who survives till the end. Fantastic. I'm glad I'm watching him in this movie.

Aside from the shortfalls of the cast, the rest of the movie does tend to make itself not boring by having a good amount of bombs, bullets and guys screaming "AAAAAARRGH!" as they shoot the enemy troops, all of whom seem to have the survival instinct of a duck with a sexual attraction to spinning helicopter blades. The problem with all of that is that pretty soon scenes start feeling less like a cohesive narrative and more like a slideshow of explosions that happened in no particular order. "Red Dawn" will jump from scene to scene with no lead-in or establishment of when or even where we are in relation to the thing we just saw, making the story quite hard to follow. And it's not too long before it starts getting really hard to care one way or another.

 It's the amazing Wolverine Brothers, Douche, Square-face and Talent!

By the way, isn't it nice when we don't have to see blood during our sequences of horrific violence? Much like "Alex Cross," there's a shocking moment in "Red Dawn" featuring a sniper rifle. But in this movie, instead of the chest, the person gets shot in the head. But don't worry! Just because the dude would have gotten his head half removed with that large-caliber bullet doesn't mean we have to see blood. Because just like real life, that's a very tidy affair. They wouldn't have even had to wash the carpet he fell on. Man, why can't every violent action movie be PG-13? It makes it so much better!

"Red Dawn" feels to me like a 5 hour long TV mini-series that was trimmed down to an hour and a half and released in theaters. And that compression does make it go by at a very brisk clip, but at the cost of knowing what in the world is happening. I'd prefer it as a mini-series. And maybe if it had been a series we could have actually gotten to know the characters instead of just knowing them as "The annoying one," "The one with the weird face," "The black one," "The one Josh Peck got killed," and Chris Hemsworth. 

I don't know what else to say, honestly. "Red Dawn" isn't the worst remake I've ever seen, but some of that probably has to due with the fact that I never liked the original. So even if it did suck, hey it's no skin off my back. I just don't care.

Check out the trailer for "Red Dawn." BTW Chris Hemsworth is not nearly as prominent in the actual film. Of course.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Red Dawn" is relatively harmless, and the action is admittedly plentiful, but it's ultimately not worth the time or effort it takes to get the disc, put it in the player, go back to the couch, hit play, chapter skip through the previews and commercials, play the movie, and then sit there for an hour and a half. There are better things you could be doing.