Silent Night (John Woo, 2023)

[Mister Six]

So this is out in the run-up to Christmas: a John Woo-directed post-Taken everyman revenge film with a Christmas ambience. I think the gimmick - such as it is - is that Joel Kinnaman's bereaved murder-dad has a knacked-in throat and can't speak. Not much to hang a film on, but it looks pretty stylish for this kind of thing, as you'd expect from Woo:

Christmas action films have become a bit of a subgenre after last year's Violent Night and 2020's Fat Man, but this one seems to be avoiding the obvious camp tone. I don't know if that'll work in its favour - I think horrible festive violence sort of needs to be tongue-in-cheek to really vibe with the season, and a dude crying over his dead kid doesn't scream "offbeat holiday treat" - but who knows?

This'll be Woo's first US film since 2003's Paycheck, I think, which I thought was all right in a breezy, forgettable early 2000s high-concept action film sort of way.

[dead-ced-dead]

I actually think (at least I remember reading this, though I could have misremembered) the gimmick goes further than that. I don't think there's ANY spoken dialogue in the movie except for the police radio chatter at the start of the trailer. Notice how no one speaks in the trailer.

[Butchers Blind]

Is this in cinemas or streaming only in the UK?

[Mister Six]

I actually think (at least I remember reading this, though I could have misremembered) the gimmick goes further than that. I don't think there's ANY spoken dialogue in the movie except for the police radio chatter at the start of the trailer. Notice how no one speaks in the trailer.

Oh god, I already had enough of this with No One Will Save You. Interest diminishing...

Is this in cinemas or streaming only in the UK?

No idea, it's in cinemas in the US. I'd assume it'll get at least a limited run in the UK.

[13 schoolyards]

Yeah, there's zero dialogue in this, and it takes place over a full year (well, he spends most of the year training to be a killing machine - it goes from one Christmas to the next). But a lot of it is either training sequences, killing sequences, or Kinnaman being alone and tormented by the brutal death of his son, so there's only a few parts where it feels gimmicky

[PlanktonSideburns]

That sounds great. So the vast majority of it spent not during Xmas

[13 schoolyards]

It's not really a Christmas movie at all - there's a few Christmas outfits at the start and the end (and the whole "Silent" bit) and that's pretty much it. All the big action takes place on Christmas Eve but it's not like he's gunning down multiple Santas or a busload of elves or handing out exploding presents or anything.

[beanheadmcginty]

This isn't very good at all.

[phantom_power]

It is really bad, bar a few good action scenes. We are supposed to feel sorry for Kinnamon and his grief but ignore the fact his wife is suffering the same loss but getting on with her life rather than drinking, brooding and plotting bloody revenge. Then his actual plan for revenge is shit, he gets innocent people killed and then acts like an idiot throughout (waiting for a gunman to finish reloading before shooting back so he gets shot rather than doing it in the 20 seconds it takes them to reload for instance). There is also a pointless cop character who turns up at the end and is equally inept.

It is so bad it almost feels like a commentary on the futility of revenge or the difference between imagined and real violence or something but I think it is just shit. Main baddie waltzing with his drug-addled girlfriend while all his goons get slaughtered level bad

[Dex Sawash]

I just learned "Wooden" Joel Cinnamon is a swede so maybe I'll take it easy on him for being unable to emote.