My Introduction and Review of "The Purge"

EARLY JUNE, 2013   
   
FAM LAM. This is what I will call my impressions of recent local movies.
FAM is for Found it At the Movies, LAM is for Lost it At the Movies..
so be forewarned, I am not going to tell you all about the films...more like my impressions and thoughts and you will make up your own mind if you should go see the film and or films I discuss.

Does my background matter...well, yes and no...I think everyone has their thoughts and impressions and we all are kind of 'critics' even tho I hate that term...we love to talk about movies and tv shows...yes I might even digress into tv land sometime.   I started with film as a kid...my folks would drop me off in phoenix for the kid movies in the morning and I would stay all afternoon for grown ups films...so from about 10 a.m. to about 5p.m. was my typical day at the movies in phoenix arizona starting at age 7 just after we moved west for my dad's health from Syracuse , New York.   Syracuse...COLD!!! PHOENIX,  WARM n HOT!!!  After wandering the world, working in agriculture and many other jobs I studied acting at American Academy of Dramatic Arts.   Wrote some short plays, started making short experimental films...had my films shown at several NY Film Festivals,  several cine-probes at MOMA and then full fellowship to NYU GRAD FIlm and TV Institute where during my last year started making many of the early live action short films for SESAME STREET!  Went on to work with NBC making more films and then films for the National Road Safety Foundation, shorts and documentaries docudramas  ...which you have most likely seen...also on PBS,  trying to save lives...only problem ,, the
intended audience...is not yet paying attention...takes the brain a few years to catch up with the message...

So in a sense that is not a bad lead into 'The Purge'...which presents a kind of horror science fiction fantasy film of a world not far from our world...but worse by far than even 1984...but a world which seems kind of familiar...unable to contain crime, violence, poverty and the accompanying evils...so to save 'the american way of life'...how can I tell you this...our nation decides once a year...you can go out and kill and possibly get
killed by anybody...just to get it out of your system...obviously education and religion has failed...only in a sense the society, religion and education has embraced this as a kind of solution...since we are all so traumatized by this yearly event that we kind of behave the rest of the year.   Of course there are those who cannot afford 'expensive shelters...gated communities'...There are the poor,  the homeless, the
minorities who might harbor terrorists among them...get it,  anyone and anybody who you don't like or hold a grudge to...this is your night...and it's ok,  the government says...you can do it for one night...and they give
the police, the EMS and hospitals and firemen...the night off!  Kind of like one of these video games where you can kill all you want...only it's not a game.  Why is it not suprising that the producers of this film
have also produced the Amytiville Horror and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films.   Look,, the crux of the story is this....would you kill innocent people to save your family if your told...It's OK....or say we live in a society that decides to take out in advance people who we might deem potentially dangerous... (that sounds familiar).   Now I won't tell you the plot...just imagine a world in which Jim Jones and Waco famatocs and other extremists have become the norm...and what would you do...umm go to Canada, well this option does not seem possible in this film...The real question is...is the erosion of civil liberties and injustice justified if it 'takes care of the bad elements'...kind of like lets build more prisons to put all of them away...Well anyway...something happened in the theatre as I watched the film,  as I do like to set in a theatre audience and share the 'group' experience.   After a typical patriot (Modeled after Charlse Manson I suspect or the young Adolf Hitler) puts forth the accepted idealogy...and we begin to see the visual realistic horror which is not the norm in these movies...and this aspires to be main stream, well after the initial shock...real shock at the gruesome events...suddenly the audience seemed  to kind of 'get into it' as after all

A.  It was not really real, right...kind of like a game.   B.  The audience began to clap, cheer and rejoice every time one of the bad establishment folk were bludgeoned and killed by the threatened family...and trust me...that included the entire world outside this little home.  Acting led by Ethan Hawke and his family which included wife, Lena Headly and kids, Max Burkholder and Adelaide Kane were excellent it the situation they had to perform in.  There seems to be a lot of gloom and doom movies out now,  they seem to be increasing...hope it's not a forwarning or prophetic of calamities which are stalking us.  

So that it for my first ramble/blog...be forwarned...it's scary and kinda traumatic...on the other hand sadly we are pretty desensitized to screen horror or for that matter much of the suffering in the world unless in some way it impacts on us directly...which I do not wish for...rather that we act out another scenario on this earth where we can make things better rather than kiil or be killed as this film so unpoetically posits!

- Mark Sadan