Silent Night review

SILENT NIGHT: 

JOHN WOO CRAFTS A DECENT CHRISTMAS ACTION MOVIE! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

LIONSGATE

Joel Kinnaman in John Woo’s Silent Night

 

            In the tradition of beloved Christmas-themed action movies like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and last year’s Violent Night, John Woo (Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Mission: Impossible 2) decides to throw his Santa cap in the ring with Silent Night and no, this is not a prequel to the Christmas slashers, Silent Night, Bloody Night or Silent Night, Deadly Night. This film marks John Woo’s first major Hollywood production since 2003’s Paycheck with his career mostly consisting of international feature films until now. 

            John Woo is a fascinating director as he was behind some of the best action movies of the 90s with Broken Arrow and Face/Off, but then starting with Mission: Impossible 2 in 2000 (A movie I enjoy in a dumb, cheesy way) his career started taking a noticeable dive with films that couldn’t quite live up to his earlier work. 

            After disappointments like Windtalkers and Paycheck, I was hopeful that he’d make a comeback someday since he crafts some of the most energized and overblown action scenes in cinema that would make Michael Bay blush. Well, that brings us to Silent Night and while I can’t say it’s on par with his 90s films, this is John Woo’s best movie since. 

            The film follows Brian (Joel Kinnaman-RoboCop (2014), Run All Night, Suicide Squad 1 and 2), a man who had a normal life and a beautiful family. But after his son is tragically killed during a gang shootout on Christmas Eve, he goes on a chase for revenge thus resulting in him getting shot in the vocal chords, losing his voice in the process. 

            Throughout the following year, Brian prepares himself to go on a vengeful manhunt against the gangs that killed his son on the next Christmas Eve. Despite his lack of dialogue, this night is going to be anything but silent. 

            The film also stars Kid Cudi (Bill & Ted Face the Music, X, Trolls Band Together) as Detective Dennis Vassel, Harold Torres (ZeroZeroZero, Memory) as Playa, and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace, A Most Violent Year, Ballerina) as Brian’s wife Saya. 

            Overall, Silent Night probably won’t go down in history as a new Christmas action movie classic and there are some aspects of it that keep it from being great. However, the action is very energized and well-edited, the concept is unique, and Joel Kinnaman’s incredible performance as its silent protagonist carried the entire film for me. 

            I’ve seen Joel Kinnaman before in other movies, but this is the best I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s all done with no dialogue. Because of that, Kinnaman has to rely on his facial expressions and mannerisms, and you can immediately tell just by looking at him what kind of person he is and even though the silent protagonist idea has been done before, Kinnaman makes it his own and gives one of the most unique performances of the year. 

            The action is spectacular which should come as no surprise since this is a John Woo film with some of my favorites being this ridiculous car chase in the beginning of the movie and a shootout on a flight of stairs that’s somewhat reminiscent of The Raid: Redemption. Just about every action sequence has a lot of fast edits, adrenaline-pumping stunts, bullets flying everywhere, and a glorious bloodbath, did not see any doves though. 

            As I said earlier about Kinnaman being mute for most of the movie and how the silent protagonist trope has been done before in other movies, what is interesting about this movie is how there is virtually no dialogue aside from a few background conversations here and there. That aspect may be polarizing for some and there are other scenes/movies that have done it way better (Most notably the opening scene from Up and the majority of Mad Max: Fury Road), but I thought it added a neat element to the film. 

            I do have some gripes with the movie though, while it is ambitious that the film isn’t dialogue-heavy, the character-development was affected by it. With the exception of Kinnaman’s Brian, you don’t really know what the other characters are like, what’s Brian’s relationship with his wife like? How do Brian and Detective Vassel work off one-another? What are the gang members’ personalities like? Which was my biggest criticism with the movie. 

            The bad guys are very one-note gangsters with hardly any personality and because of that, it doesn’t really feel like anything is at stake here. Yes, they killed the main character’s son, but when your antagonists aren’t interesting or you don’t make them so diabolical and nasty so the audience can hate them, it doesn’t feel as satisfying when the criminals get their comeuppance. 

            Take the criminals from the John Wick movies for example (Mainly the first one), they aren’t the most defined or complex bad guys, but there is enough time devoted to them for the audience to dislike them thus making their defeat more satisfying. Granted, they start to focus on the gang members a little more during the climax, but the ship had already sailed and even though the action scenes are well-choreographed, I didn’t feel much urgency when I was watching them. 

            Despite its flaws, I thought Silent Night was a decent-enough holiday action movie that will hopefully lead to better films from John Woo in the future. If you’re looking for some Christmas shoot ‘em up goodness, you might enjoy this movie fine…but I think you’d still be better off saving it for the Die Hard re-release that’s coming up.