THE PURGE Once a year all crime is legal. It's a great pitch and one that you can see grabs the attention of a film studio. You hear time and time again about films being made because of a brilliant 30 second pitch. The problem is you then have to come up with a 90 minute plus film which not only explores this great idea, but creates a plausible story, characters and an engaging film. Time and again, the brilliant idea runs out of steam after about 30 minutes. It is of course hard to predict the success of a film - who would have thought that a character piece about a man overcoming his stutter to deliver a two minute piece to radio would make an award winning drama, but the King's Speech did all that. It did it because the script, characters and execution were superb - not because the idea was really cool.

And so in 2022 Amercia, once a year all crime is legal. People are allowed, with a few limits on weaponry, to run about for 12 hours committing any crime you can think of. The result is a virtually non-existent crime rate and employment levels at 1 per cent. However some people choose not to take part in this Purge, like James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) and his family. James has made his fortune selling security to like minded people, and is looking forward to a quiet night in when his son Charlie (Max Burkholder) decides to let in a bloodied stranger (Edwin Hodge) who is being pursued by some nasty individuals. These ne'er do wells try and break into James house, and the dilemma faced by him and his family is whether they release the stranger to his fate or try and survive the night together.

The Purge sadly falls into the category of a film which is a great pitch but falls flat once you've got past the set up. The build up of tension is excellently done, but once the villains are in the house, it descends into fairly predictable horror film scares and brutal violence. Hawke shows himself to be an admirable family man turned action hero, but there isn't quite enough for an actor of his calibre to get their teeth into. There's a chilling performance from Rhys Wakefield as the leader of the villains and a nice twist at the end. However it fails to live up to the promise of the concept, and leaves you feeling a bit disappointed overall.

6/10 Andrew Shepherd