Year:  2023

Director:  John Woo

Rated:  MA

Release:  7 December 2023

Distributor: Rialto

Running time: 104 minutes

Worth: $13.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth

Cast:
Joel Kinnaman, Scott Mescudi, Catalina Sandino Moreno

Intro:
… brutal and intense …

As it turns out, the true meaning of Christmas – well, at least according to John Woo – is kicking ass.

For the first time since 2003’s Paycheck, director John Woo returns to the United States with the action thriller Silent Night. Starring Joel Kinnaman and Scott Mescudi, the movie details the plight of a father (Kinnaman), who goes into the criminal underworld on a mission to avenge the death of his young child.

First and foremost, Silent Night is a true achievement in sound design. The film has no dialogue. Woo relies on the visceral and intense Kinnaman, who provides an excellent performance, in essentially, a traditional, run of the mill, action movie. Woo understands that Kinnaman’s eyes are remarkable, and tells most of the story needed, and he allows the Swedish actor to go nuts.

With no dialogue to rely on, Woo embraces his action heritage with callbacks to movies like Face/Off and Hard Boiled, some of the director’s best work. There are sequences in Silent Night that you have seen before, but never like this. The way the director swings the camera around, making the audience feel as if we are really beside Kinnaman’s character (whose last name is literally Godluck), is nothing short of badass.

What’s particularly great about Silent Night is its refusal to play any of this as a joke, which allows the audience to believe everything that is presented to us, as nuts and insane as some of it truly is – specifically a great one-shot on a staircase in the movie’s third act. There is no winking at the audience, or references to how silly it all is, and for a modern American action movie, that is quite the achievement.

Silent Night is serious, with Woo making such a brutal and intense film out of something that, in the hands of a lesser craftsperson, could have easily become a bit of a farce.

If you are looking for a solid way to spend 100 minutes this holiday season, and you have respect for the cinematic craft, or you just want to see Joel Kinnaman kill people in an exhilarating way, we strongly recommend giving Silent Night a go.

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