Frank Grillo (The Purge: Anarchy / Captain America: Civil War) returns as Leo Barnes, the rough and tumble hard man from The Purge: Anarchy who has somehow found himself as the bodyguard of senator Charlie Roan (Played by Elizabeth Mitchell from Lost) as she aims to become president and abolish the evil Purge night tradition. As you can imagine some people aren't happy with this idea, so the night before the annual purge a bill is created to include political figures in the killing sprees in an attempt to get rid of Roan. Double Crossed by his own security team Leo finds himself, yet again, out on the streets. Only this time the fact of Americas future is at stake.
I loved the first Purge film, to be honest I am a fan of the home invasion sub-genre more than this kill, kill, kill style from the sequels, however The Purge: Election Year is a fair addition to the series. Is it as good as The Purge: Anarchy? not really but it is a good watch. Grill, in my opinion shouldn't be in this film, not due to his acting skills but more as in his character shouldn't be here. I would have liked to see a new character take care of Charlie Roan, expanding the story but with new characters. I liked the Everyman aspect of Joe (Mykelti Williamson - Forest Gump / Con-Air) and his little group and the scenes with the shoplifter psycho girl Kimmy (Brittany Mirabile) coming back to get her god damn candy bar was probably the more exciting portion of the film in my opinion. Just a shame it didn't last long enough.
The addition of the neo-Nazi white supremacists was going to happen at some point I suppose. Doesn't make them the interesting though and this is what let the film down for me. In a world where all murder is legal you could have had anyone do those killings. The ending was a let down as well for me, is the election was lost by Roan it would have sent a shock to our heroes and left it open in a better way for the follow up films or TV show, which ever comes first.
As a whole The Purge: Election Year was more or less the same as The Purge: Anarchy. Great action and some creepy costume designs keep the horror fan in me coming back for more, while the addition of Murder Tourism hopefully will lead to maybe another Purge film in say the UK or Europe which would be an interesting concept. It is worth a watch if you enjoyed the first two.