THE FIRST PURGE (2018)
Label: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 98 Minutes
Audio: English DTS: X Master Audio, English Dolby Digital 2.0, Spanish, French DTS Digital Surround 5.1 with Optional English SDH, French Canadian, Latin American Spanish
Video: 4K UltraHD 2160p Widescreen (2.39:1)
Director: Gerard McMurray
Cast: Marisa Tomei, Melonie Diaz, Luna Lauren Velez, Patch Darragh, Lex Scott Davis, Mo McRae
The fourth film in The Purge franchise goes with the origin story, with political party New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) have overthrown the traditional two-party system they announce a social experiment, a 12-hour crime free-for-all scheduled to take place on Staten Island. The film opens with interview footage of a violent drug addict named Skeletor (Rotimi Paul) and a pair of old ladies who speak about wanting to participate in the event and what their motivations are, a piece that reveals the origin of the name of the event. The government is offering five grand to citizen who choose to remain on the island during the experiment, and more on top of that if they actively participate. Once citizens sign on they are given arm-implanted trackers and a pair of glowing contact lenses enabled with a camera as so the government can monitor the event and see what's happening on the streets.
We're then introduced to a few of the key player, we have Purge-protester Nya (Lex Scott Davis) and her brother Isaiah (Joivan Wade), drug kingpin Dmitri (Y'lan Noel), NFFA Chirf of Staff Arlo Sabian (Patch Darragh) and Dr. May (Marisa Tomei), who is the architect of The Purge experiment. With a series that has been around for three film I didn't think we needed an origin story, it's been laid out well-enough in the last few films, but it's not long before this one gets right into the action and it doesn't get bogged down by the politics that lead-up to the first event, though there's plenty of politics stitched into the film, it's all very left leaning, so much so I overheard a few seemingly right-wingers discussing the film at Target the other days, saying how the film was a slanderous dig at Trump's politics and his supporters - read into that what you will.
As the first purge experiment commences people gather in what they assume will be safe places - like a church, but you know where this is headed long before the bloodshed begins. People gather at purge block parties loaded with masked revelers who aren't taking the whole purge thing too seriously, and to be honest there's not a whole lot of crime happening at first. Demented Skeletor gets right to the first kill, this guy gas a tribally-scarred face that got right under my skin, he is exactly the sort of guy who wants to purge, and he's only to happy to oblige the government with many gruesome kills, revelling in the violence, crashing the block party and immediately slaughtering several people in cold blood.
A few hours into the purge when things seem to be slowing down a well-armed and military trained group of mercenaries in creepy black-face masks and white supremacist cloaks roll into the low-income areas and begin laying down a spray of gunfire, inspiring drug kingpin Dmitri to turn anti-hero, trying to save his neighborhood from a threat that goes beyond just ordinary citizens killing each other because they can, something bigger is happening. I've always thought that the idea of The Purge was more powerful than the actual films, touching on some deep-seated class warfare politics that are more divisive now than ever the current socio-political climate, and this one really lays bare what I think is already well-defined in the previous films, that The Purge is really an excuse to wipe out the poor.
I dig the film a bunch but it did start off a little slow for me, it didn't help that I though the Isaiah character was weak and annoying, but I liked his big sister Nya, and her connection to drug kingpin Dmitri, who is far and away the most fascinating and charismatic character in the film. The guy turns into a total Die Hard-esque bad-ass, even sporting a wife beater while taking on an entire building of mercenaries, so it's hard not to make the comparison, but Y'lan Noel is a bonafide action-film star here, kudos to director Gerard McMurray for bringing the film new heights of action and violence, I found it a potent and engaging film once the ball got rolling.
Marissa Tomei's character is interesting, being the architect of the event but finding the execution of her theory in action hard-to-swallow, especially when she finds some anomalies that emerge that are contradictory her research, it's an interesting character but she's under used, gone too soon.
The highlight of the film for me is Dmitri's assault on a group of mercenaries known as the "smiley's", he taking the building floor by floor with some brutal hand-to hand combat in the stairwells as he makes his way upward, the action is very well-staged and shot for maximum impact. If you love the creepy masks of the series you will not be disappointed by this one, there's a toothed mask, multiple baby-faced masks, and perhaps the most impactful, racists black face masks that are relevant to the plot line. Those are all great, but the creepiest face of all is all-natural, that of the deranged drug addict Skeletor with those glowing government-issue contact lenses, that's pure nightmare fuel.
Audio/Video: The First Purge (2018) looks outstanding on 4K Ultra HD, the 2.39:1 framed image is razor sharp with glorious amounts of depth and clarity, black are deep and inky, and colors are vibrant. The skin tones look spot on, and the fine detail looks great, showcasing skin pores and textures in clothing and environments. Audio comes by way of an excellent English DTS X MA that is solid, the low end has some nice gut-punch to it, the atmospherics are off the harts, the sounds of gun fire, screams, the score, and drones are well represented b the immersive use of the surround channels, an excellent presentation through and through.
Onto the extras we get one deleted scene showing an alternate death scene for one of the baddies, a brief 2-min piece about the action in the film, a 5-min piece with the cast and creators speaking about expanding the world of the Purge series with this one, and a 2-min bit about the use of masks in the film, which was cool.
Special Features:
- Deleted Scene (2 min) HD
- A Radical Experiment (5 min) HD
- Bringing the Chaos (2 min) HD
- The Masks of the First Purge (2 min) HD
I have enjoyed all the movie in The Purge franchise so far, and The First Purge in my opinion is the best of them since The Purge: Anarchy (2014), it might actually be my favorite in the series so far, which I did not expect going in to the fourth film in the series. The 4K UltraHD is light on significant extras but the 4K presentation is top-notch, highly recommended.
