So it's not the holiday that gives this its title. Rather, it's the bullet to the throat that suburban dad Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) takes in the opening sequence that removes his voice - and seemingly everyone else's, as this is basically dialogue-free for the 90-odd minutes plus credits run time. There's the occasional distant shout, some radio chat and a few text messages, but otherwise, as Elvis once put it, it's all about a little less conversation, a little more action please.
This isn't a new trick. The direct to streaming horror film No One Will Save You pulled it off earlier this year, though that had the advantage of being set over a handful of days in a sparsely populated stretch of countryside. Silent Night takes place over an entire year, from one bloody holiday season to the next, as Godlock recovers from his wounds - taken while chasing down and almost wiping out the drive-by shooters whose stray bullets killed his son - then trains himself up to be the ultimate killing machine while his wife (Catalina Sandino Moreno) drifts away, before he finally hits the streets of his Texas town for a night of violent revenge aimed directly at local scumbag Playa (Harold Torres) and his army of nameless goons.
It's a pretty shaky premise, but Silent Night has a secret weapon. It's the return to US shores of director John Woo, last seen in English-language cinema with 2003's Paycheck but remembered forever for Hong Kong classics like The Killer and Hardboiled alongside his one American great, Face/Off.
Despite his undeniable skill at staging action, Woo was always a poor fit for Hollywood. In part that's because he doesn't do irony; whatever his films flaws, they're always achingly sincere and blatantly emotional in a way that blockbusters then (and to a large extent now) have tried to avoid.
Here though, he's making a Christmas movie about a grieving father; sincerity and emotion come with the territory. So while the broad outlines of this story are exactly what you expect and there are absolutely no surprises whatsoever, it's the little moments - and Woo's undeniable skill when it comes to action - that pack a punch. Godlock is driven to revenge (and to buy a cool car to do it in), but that doesn't mean he likes it, and Kinnaman gets to pull a lot of anguished and tormented faces as he takes his pain and shares it around.
Because there's no dialogue, the storytelling has to be entirely visual. Again, this plays to Woo's strengths as a film maker who tells it like he sees it. Much of the pleasure here comes from simply watching someone get good at what they're trying to do; we're well past the halfway mark before Godlock's extensive training starts being put to use.
Action cinema has come a long way since Woo was making A Better Tomorrow, but it's still a lot of fun seeing the old master revive the old standards. Does someone use two guns to turn a bad guy into a sieve? Of course. Is there a moment with a fluttering bird? Naturally. And as for the power of brotherhood - or just two previous foes realising in the middle of a gunfight that they can only rely on each other - it's a valuable message no matter what time of year.
But those moments are brief, little more than nods to the longtime fans. Woo is telling a story, not serving up a greatest hits show, and while this is definitely a John Woo film it's the full throttle emotions as much as the relentless and visceral violence that shows his stamp.
Put another way, this is the rare recent revenge rampage that dares to suggest that extreme violence might be a bad thing, and that murdering a whole lot of people might leave you feeling empty inside. It's that willingness to tell a story that's full of cartoon cliche bad guys and raw emotion, and not just having to shoot bad guys a dozen times to make sure they don't get back up, that makes Silent Night a classic John Woo movie.
Though there is a fair bit of that in there too.
- Anthony Morris
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