One thing I try my best to avoid when writing these things is to critique the critiques, meaning I try not to approach my review in a manner of defending points that are being commonly brought up by other, less favorable, reviews. Because it becomes less about my feelings on the movie, and more about my feelings on other people’s feelings about the film, which…I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem productive to me, and it ultimately comes off a bit self-serving. But I am only human, and there are certain situations where I can’t help myself, especially when I struggle to see where certain opinions come from.
Such is the case for the latest film from action legend John Woo, Silent Night, which is his first American production since 2003’s Paycheck. With a script by Robert Archer Lynn, the story is a fairly standard revenge film – Brian Godluck (Joel Kinnaman) is your average working class Joe with a wife and young kid, and unfortunately, the kid is hit by a stray bullet during a drive-by, and his initial attempt to catch the people responsible left him with an injury that prevents him from speaking. When he is able to move again, and goes back home with his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno), but he begins to form a plan to take out everyone who was responsible.
Oh, and aside from some stuff on the radio, and a quite line from off-screen here and there, the film features no spoken dialogue.
Oddly enough, the film that this experience reminded me of the most was the most recent Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Not due to any plot similarities, but in the sense that you have a film that sees the return of a famous visual stylist at the help – with Sam Raimi in the case for Doctor Strange – and receiving muted reactions, with many criticisms being related to the lack of these filmmakers’ trademarks, which is something I vehemently disagree with.
Silent Night definitely feels like John Woo, perhaps not the John Woo of Face/Off or The Killer, but definitely the John Woo behind Bullet In The Head and Heroes Shed No Tears. It contains a lot of his signature stylistic flourishes from the use of slow-mo, aggressive gun play, earnest melodrama, and in general a number of the spiritual tenets of the heroic bloodshed subgenre that he – among other Hong Kong action directors – defined in the 80s. No doves though, which is a bummer.
That said, the action isn’t quite as dynamic as a lot of his earlier work. One can’t help but imagine him maybe wanting to ease himself back into the workings of the Hollywood machine after so much time away, and us having been spoiled with the 87Eleven/John Wick style becoming a dominant fixture on the western action landscape for the past decade. Regardless of it not being as classic Woo, the action is still strong, the stunt and choreography team all did terrific work, the sound is impeccable, each shot and hit has impact, and the violence is delightfully brutal.
Of course, just because Woo might not being aiming to hit the same action wavelength as some of his iconic works, it does not mean that he’s phoning it in. With the lack of dialogue, it’s clear he wants to experiment and try new and different things, even at this stage in his career and in his late 70s. I mean, let’s be real, what does John Woo have to prove to us? I’ll tell you, not a God damn thing, that’s what. And as far as the gimmick goes, it works more often than it doesn’t. The first half does struggle a bit, but he does manage to evoke a surprising amount of emotion from the things that are left unsaid, especially when it came to the couple’s grief over the loss of their child.
A lot of this is well executed due to the committed performances by the whole cast. Kinnaman really shines here, tapping into the vulnerability of a man suffering extreme grief, as well as the ordinary man who is pushing himself through extraordinary situations. It’s quite amusing see him struggle to do pull-ups and look up knife fight tutorials on YouTube. He also plays off Moreno very well, creating this whole sense of history between the two before being hit by their tragedy. Even Scott Mescudi does well as a detective who feels powerless to help in the system. Mescudi even gets his own Chow Yun-fat dual wielding moment in the climax, which is fun to see.
I can certainly understand those who felt disappointed by Silent Night. This felt like something that was setup to be like John Woo’s Fury Road, when it really isn’t aiming for something that ambitious. Maybe some expected it to almost be a parody of Woo’s sensibilities. It’s simply a straightforward genre exercise, but with a twist. That’s it, and on those terms, I think the film succeeds. There is certainly…something…to be said about the racial dynamics, which I was initially concerned about after seeing the trailer. It is a film about an angry white guy going on a killing spree against Latin gangsters. But unlike Peppermint, just to name a recent example, the world of Silent Night is heightened almost to Death Wish 3 proportions, with these gangs wandering the streets and taking part in total warfare, which makes it much harder to take seriously. I did have a good time with the film as a whole, there’s plenty of moments that were exciting and resonating and inventive. Even subdued John Woo is still far more cooler than most of the stuff coming out, and his presence absolutely elevates the material by quite a margin. Your mileage may vary though.
Silent Night is now out in theaters.