Michael K. Williams – Movies of the Soul

Background to the franchise :: Most of you might have watched the first movie of this franchise, and other might have surely heard about it here or there. It is basically about the United States of America of another reality. Unemployment has been successfully brought to a new low. As the number of people below poverty line decreases every year, crime becomes something which is rather not known. All thanks to the Purge, which has made all crime legal with all police, fire and rescue, and hospital emergency services closed down for one night a year, for twelve hours, from seven pm to seven am – anything goes at that time period. This idea by a totalitarian party called The New Founding Fathers of America makes sure that there is catharsis, and also that there is a certain amount of population control of the poor, as the wealthy rarely become victims of the twelve hours of crime.

What is it about? :: We know from the last movie of the franchise that the most successful Purge happened in the year 2022. Here, we are in the very next year, as 2023 gets ready for the year’s big festival of brutality and chaos. It is March 21, 2023, and as the time comes closer, everyone wishes the other “Stay safe”. There are only two things to do for people, to go on a murder spree or hide themselves somewhere indoors with enough security added. At the same time, there is the anti-Purge revolutionaries hoping to strike back in defence of the poor. There is one armed police officer looking for revenge on the streets as he was denied justice by the law that he trusted, a husband and wife are left on the road with car trouble and a mother and a daughter are trying to escape from a group that captures them. The rest of the movie is what follows on the day of the Purge.

The defence of The Purge: Anarchy :: There is a lot more to this sequel than the predecessor. There is a certain expansion on what was there in the first movie, especially with the idea. The bloody images that the movie shows are extremely powerful, and this is also the first time that we get the clear view of what happens outside in the streets during the Purge instead of how it turns out to be inside one house and maximum, a neighbourhood. There is an even clearer picture what happens outside the rich neighbourhood and how the poor or even the middle class are treated during the Purge. and it moves out of the possibility of being caught in the stereotype. You can say that it better expresses what the first movie had in mind. The ending is really good too, and it is a real positive whichever way you look at it.

Positives and Negatives :: The true nature of people that The Purge: Anarchy brings is not going to be nice for all kinds of viewers. There is the loss of humanity, and the cruelty that is sponsored by the government as well as the corporates, as the wealthy also hopes to have their right to purge without risking that much. The right to life has been replaced by the right to kill – new fundamental right. So, one needs to prepare to be shocked. As things get further revealed, it is not just what is on the screen that brings the shock, but also what hides behind which is even more. It is how the whole thing is designed that has more power than what stays on the screen for the viewers to watch. It is about what might happen in many forms, and its brings that realization that all violence has a few bigger master plan that hides behind a mask. But the premise could have had even further development!

Performers of the soul :: The second part has more characterization involved, and the limitations of the first one are overcome as the Purge goes wider and with more opportunities for terror. Frank Grillo is the one who leads the way with the performance just like he did with the Purge in the movie. He played Brock Rumlow (comic book character Crossbones) in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and will make the grand return in Captain America: Civil War. He reminds one of Eric Bana. Zoë Soul and Carmen Ejogo nicely plays the next significant characters in the movie. The rest of the cast including Kiele Sanchez and Zach Gilford also does fine in their respective roles, but the hero still remains the theme – with the support there in the performances.

Soul exploration :: The Purge: Anarchy has a dark soul. Even without the blood and gore as some other movies, it isjust brutality in store. It has a government which allows the same, and a media which celebrates it. The wishes are for the success of the Purge as if it is a need. There are also government officials granted immunity from the horror of the pledge. It doesn’t give humanity a place. There is class divide, and it is on the blood of the lesser privileged human that the Purge thrives. It is also a reflection of the truth that basically nobody likes the other. So the basic idea is to save oneself from the other or kill the other. In case of a communal riot, it is not so different in the present world too, isn’t it? There are occasions when people descend into so much of chaos, and Purge is just an example of the same. Things only get worse when people in power need this to happen.

How it finishes :: The Purge: Anarchy is more thriller with a message rather than the horror-slasher. It nicely explores the human nature and its tendency for violence even against their own people. It shows how government joins in to take advantage of the same, and use it to their political advantage and the ease of administration. Then there are the corporate rich who hopes to take advantage of the poor, making sure that their deaths happen to the rich Purge satisfaction, as it is also an opportunity for them to become richer through selling arms and ammunitions as well as the security systems to those who can afford them. When seeing wars, terrorists attacks and communal riots, there is question of who is to blame, and there are many answers in this movie, and no, you can’t blame religion, things are much bigger than that.

Release date: 18th July 2014
Running time: 103 minutes
Directed by: James DeMonaco
Starring: Frank Grillo, Zoë Soul, Carmen Ejogo, Kiele Sanchez, Zach Gilford, Michael K. Williams, Justina Machado, John Beasley, Jack Conley, Noel Gugliemi, Castulo Guerra, Edwin Hodge, Keith Stanfield, Roberta Valderrama, Brandon Keener

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

A hybrid in black :: A long time after the release of the 1987 version, here is a reboot which was much talked about. There are times when remakes and reboots do work, like in the case of Dredd, Batman Begins, The Amazing Spider-Man and Man of Steel, but there are times when they don’t. RoboCop might have also wondered about the same, and no wonder they wanted to make this hero black too, and remains so through most of the movie. It has released here two days after the original release in the United States and seems to have attracted less audience even as the title character is rather famous among the masses and the posters are pretty much impressive. The original movie re-telecasted on television might have brought better audience, even as this one might have just managed to keep itself together, but not throughout the whole movie, that is for sure. As the original movie was rather ahead of its times, one would wonder where this one will stand as bigger robots have come and gone in the form of Transformers and Pacific Rim.

What is it about? :: The world has gone on to 2028. OmniCorp is the organization that supplies mechanized soldiers to the United States Army which are used abroad. They wish to use the same inside the United States, but the same doesn’t happen due to Dreyfus Act which prevents it. The CEO of the organization asks a leading scientist to create a soldier who is a combination of man and machine, so that the public will like him and support more machines. As they look for a human who can be merged with the machine, one of the cops Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is critically injured by a bomb blast. As his wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish) approves the same to see him live, he is chosen as the RoboCop. The control of the human side is kept to the minimum so that his decisions are more accurate and without being shadowed by human emotions which could weaken his reliability. The question remains if the man or the machine wins in the end, and whether he can have revenge on the people who tried to kill him as well as those who wishes to control him.

The defence of RoboCop :: So RoboCop rides on the fame of a movie which was more popular than even those movies which had big stars in 1987. Being Alexander James Murphy and newest model from OCP Crime Prevention Unit of Detroit Police Department, this guy has been a popular hero for quite a long time. The idea of a cyborg, half-man and half-machine was a crowd favourite. This movie works on that solid grounds, and therefore this movie does starts with certain good score. There are lots of action sequences in store for such a character, and this movie also has the same, but mostly about shooting people. Along with the cyborg, the other robots are also nicely done. The robot versus drones training fight remains the best shooting sequence in the movie. The movie tries again and again to bring more and more thoughts into the process, including humanity, machines and souls, and it makes more and more efforts to keep the emotional side powerful.

The claws of flaw :: The movie can’t really use this emotional side to its advantage, as it is so much caught between it’s confusion about the major character being a man or robot, and in the process, often forgets that the viewers are human, or mostly belonging to that particular species which is supposed to be intellectually superior. RoboCop tries to live on the hype of the original, and in the process, ends up being too less of an entity which can be something which belongs to this age. To add to it, some fight sequences are horribly uninteresting. Then Iran seems to be occupied by the United States and RoboCop is made in China. There is also a television programme which is rather boring for the common viewer. Whenever there is too much deviation from the core of a movie like this, which should have been action, there was to be struggle, and RoboCop is caught in that problem which it has brought upon itself with repetition of the “emotion” stuff, as it gets overdone.

How it works :: Joel Kinnaman does well as the protagonist of the movie. One has to appreciate his presence as the cyborg right from that moment he wakes up inside that suit which is himself. Abbie Cornish is also nice; and I have seen her only in Sucker Punch before. There are lots of good moments provided by the cast, and the movie certainly has its own style. RoboCop seems to be doing better than the 2012 remake of Dredd for now, but I would say that the latter is one of the best reboots ever, even as RoboCop will surely collect more money than the same. Both works on almost the same platform, in a futuristic world full of crime, but RoboCop has the advantage of its hybrid character, and it is what sells, no matter how better Dredd really is. Unlike the original movie, this one isn’t really clear, as it seems to wonder what it is going to convey to the audience. It could have used a lot of updates which any robot should have with that advancement in technology.

Soul exploration :: As RoboCop is the latest victim to Hollywood’s desire to remake movies, there is surely a lot more than what meets the eye. There is a certain amount of satire in it, about the millionaire corporate greed and the prejudice of media, even as they rarely strike hard enough. There is lot of weakness in the idea. The audience expectation of an action movie is fulfilled only on occasions, as the robot police doesn’t get into the field until the second half. There is a lot of slowness related to the first half due to this, but one can spend that time thinking about what is to come and which part of this new breed of police will take over. The movie repeats what one would have always thought about the original law enforcer cyborg, and somewhat adds to the questions which were already there. But the answers are rather not clear in this case. May be it is because the movie wonders about its genre, but it fails to make its point clear as it has another television show in the end which continues what it had been saying.

How it finishes :: RoboCop doesn’t finish that strong as expected from the trailer. There was almost no scene which evoked any good response from the audience in the theatre. It was as if everyone in there was dead; there is always something to cheer for in almost every Hollywood action movie, but not in this one. When it tries too much in order to touch the foreign policy of the United States, capitalism, imperialism, media lies, human tendency towards corruption, terrorism, violence, modern tenchnology with side-effects and all things possible, with no particular care for one, there is rather too much of mess in an action movie which people are expecting. May be it had stuck to one or two things and used more interesting action sequences, with a better link between the audience and the human side of the robot, this would have been better. For now, it is just another okay movie which manages to hold on.

Release date: 14th February 2014 (India); 12th February 2014 (USA)
Running time: 118 minutes
Directed by: José Padilha
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel