Purgation

Ethan Hawke has been steadily stockpiling a vast amount of entertainment goodwill with me. He's made great films beloved by critics, like this year's Before Midnight. He's elevated movies that probably should have been awful into something pretty good, like Sinister and Daywalkers. And of course, he starred in one of my favorites, Gattaca. Basically, it's reached a point where a movie I might not otherwise have considered might make it into my queue if there was apparently something about it interesting enough that Ethan Hawke decided to appear in it.

Sadly, he lost some of that goodwill on The Purge.

Set in a dystopian future a short decade from now, The Purge is an odd fusion of Die Hard and Panic Room. Any and all crime is legal in America for one night each year, and a family tries to survive the night by hiding in their house from a group of crazed killers. Ethan Hawke and Game of Thrones' Lena Headey star as the protective parents of two children, whose own relationship begins to decay as they're forced to do awful things for their family.

I've seen worse by far, but there are still a lot of things wrong with this movie. Setting is a big one. And I'm not even talking about the ridiculous ask that America is just 10 years and one fascist dictator away from instituting an annual murderous bacchanal; there's some surprisingly shrewd satire and social commentary in that concept that gets a thumbs up from me, even if the delivery is a bit on the nose at times. No, the problem (astutely pointed out to me by a friend) is that despite having set up a rather compelling world, the movie then chooses to focus on just one house. If this were television, this would be what they call a "bottle show."

The movie then goes on to play the same moment over and over again. I feel I'm not spoiling anything by saying that eventually, the killers do break into the house. And once they do, every five minutes it's "surprising rescue of someone who is just a half-second from death." I'm not saying a symphony could have been written here, but it's just one note over and over again. For a far more compelling take on "creepy home invasion," with a good deal more variety in the scene set-ups, check out The Strangers.

But I guess I got what I expected, in that Ethan Hawke is pretty good in it. He has a shallow character to work with, but he's believable in every moment he plays. Lena Headey is pretty solid too, though I do think that the script falls short in justifying a turn for her character, instead relying on the audience to automatically infuse her with the strength of Cersei or Sarah Connor. But actually, the best performance in the film might just be Rhys Wakefield as the "Polite Leader" of the thugs who come knocking at the door. With a Joker-like rictus grin and bipolar turns between civility and psychosis, he does make the danger real; more reliance on his performance and less on cheap "make you jump" scares would have improved the film.

The Purge isn't a total loss, but it's certainly not worth recommending. I give it a C-.