The Facts:
Synopsis: A grieving father left mute by a shooting that kills his son enacts his long-awaited revenge against a ruthless gang on Christmas Eve.
Stars: Joel Kinnaman, Scott Mescudi, Harold Torres, Catalina Sandino Moreno
Director: John Woo
Rated: R
Running Length: 104 minutes
TMMM Score: (3/10)
Review: Since its release in 1994, Mariah Carey’s Christmas tune “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has become THE holiday season song. Certified Diamond (not Gold, not Platinum, Diamond) by the Recording Industry Association of America, its worldwide reach is in the billions. Carey is said to net close to 3 million each season when the song goes into major rotation. What has made it such an enduring classic, though? It’s well-written, of course, but there’s a musicality that worms into our brains and, most importantly, an appealing hook that makes it a nice jingle to jangle around the tree to.
The best previews also have hooks, a unique allure that should make viewers want to remember it and keep track of its eventual release. Much credit should go to the creators of Silent Night for devising a premise that would make an audience weary of too many expository action franchise flicks sit up a little taller in their seats while watching the marketing for this Christmas-ish revenge thriller containing no dialogue. Watching the trailer for this in theaters, I’ll admit to being sold on it based solely on the premise. I wish I could give the film itself the same high marks for following through on its promise to entertain, but alas, this is a heavy, if at times nicely polished, lump of coal.
Hong Kong director John Woo returns to Hollywood to make his first film in twenty years (2003’s Paycheck was his last flick here), and it doesn’t feel like he’s learned much in his time away. Though highly regarded in the Chinese film industry for his early works like The Killer and Hard Boiled, Woo has struggled to make the same kind of dent in the U.S. market despite landing big-budget projects such as 1997’s enjoyably campy Face/Off and the lackluster Mission: Impossible 2 in 2000. Silent Night has Woo’s trademark bold fight scenes and a few mid-size stunt sequences (mostly marred by terrible CGI) that remind you of what he’s capable of, but he’s the wrong person to handle the film’s gimmicky plot device of being nearly dialogue-free.
In Silent Night, California family man Brian Godluck loses the ability to speak after he’s shot in the throat by gang leader Playa (Harold Torres), whom Brian had been pursuing during the film’s title sequence. Playa was involved in a neighborhood shooting that left Brian’s young son the victim of a stray bullet on Christmas, and without thinking of the consequences, Brian took off after the men responsible. Barely escaping with his life, Brian slowly works his way back to health while his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno, The Quarry) looks on, unable to reach her emotionally detached husband.
Consumed with grief over the death of his son and filled with rage toward the gang members he holds accountable, Brian (Joel Kinnaman, RoboCop) spends the next year forming a plan. He will build up his strength, improve his skill with hand-to-hand combat, and amass an arsenal of firearms and other weapons to strike by the first anniversary of his son’s death. The final act of the film takes place on Christmas Eve, following Brian as he enacts his bloody revenge and stands up for not just his son but the other victims of gun violence who never had a chance to fight back.
The simplicity in Robert Archer Lynn’s screenplay is very John Wick-ian in scale, and there’s potential for Silent Night to have gone a more cerebral route as it leads towards its inevitable gonzo finale. In the hands of Woo and an oddly at-sea Kinnaman, the movie is a blunt force exercise in boredom, rarely finding its pulse rising higher than a few elite close-up fight passages. A film without dialogue is one thing, but the actors should still attempt to find a way to communicate in some form. Here, there are clever ways to avoid interactions (and maintain the premise) while occasionally letting talking on television and police radios establish some scenes that would otherwise be incomprehensible. (It’s also how we get the use of the word “gangbanger” in 2023, as in “a gangbanger just shot at me!”…unbelievable.) Yet no one in the film connects, and therefore the movie fails to connect with audiences.
I like Kinnaman; I think he’s a good actor and has shown potential in previous films, but here, he falls too deep into the character’s hole and can’t pull himself out. Brian is so damaged that he comes across as deranged, making the final fifteen minutes feel like a splatter film instead of one man’s avenging angel crusade. Transforming himself from an “everyman” to a ripped vigilante seems to motivate Kinnaman, and you can almost hear Woo salivating during the scenes at a target range where Brian fires about 50 rounds directly into the heart of a paper target, one-handed. (Does nobody at that gun range think that a tad odd?)
If Silent Night had used its premise with more nuance, it could have crafted a thriller that audiences could return to every few years as a nice pairing or alternative to other Christmas-themed action flicks. Even with the temptation of Woo behind the camera, viewers will likely put it on their naughty (movie) list as they exit the theater.
Leave a Reply