It’s been 20 years since John Woo helmed an American action project. A legend of action cinema, Woo has unique style of operatic violence and iconic imagery that instantly signals that his fingerprints are all over the film, and “Silent Night” is no exception. Car chases, slow mo, gun fu, explosions, and dual pistols are all present in this latest American return. No doves, though.
All of these things make Woo’s signature styling a draw for any action fan, which is why it’s so disheartening that “Silent Night” lacks the charisma and staying power of his previous work. It’s not that Woo has lost a step; the man certainly knows his way around action set pieces and delivers the kind of operatic carnage one would expect. But it’s more so that American action cinema has leveled up tremendously in the last 20 years, most notably with entries like “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “John Wick” that have forever altered the way we construct and view action. This feels regressive in the most disappointing ways, delivering a few action set pieces that are decent enough but don’t wow and are surrounded by dull, muted (literally) melodrama that, when you strip away the shtick of silence, becomes no more than the sum of its redundant and uninspiring parts.
I know – it pains me to be so harsh of “Silent Night.” This should’ve been a film tailor made for my action appetite, one that left me reeling in its B-movie roots and championing the cheese of “Guns and cars go BOOM!” Sadly Woo feels stuck in the past, not necessarily in his filmmaking but in his interpretation of the genre as a whole. It feels more like an unintentional throwback that captures the worst parts of early 2000 filmmaking, and never wholly embraces its over the top framework nor incorporates the current state of action cinema to create a more balanced film. This imbalance paired with its strange choice to have no dialogue removes all of the thrills and engagement that should come from the action present. Instead, without the over the top charm of the performers to sell the insane premise and tried and true revenge story, this is hollow and meandering and never gives any real reason to be invested in anything beyond its surface level outline. And yes, I was aware of the no dialogue framework prior to viewing the film, and I was actually looking forward to this unique aspect of the film.
I didn’t think it would bother me, but the film itself is so dull and charmless that “Silent Night” really left me begging for words. Any of them. Just say literally anything to move this thing along.
Though John Woo’s direction is still relatively solid, its script by Robert Archer Lynn is a key hindrance for elevating this to meet the new action standards. It is rooted in outdated tropes and cliche story beats, but more than that it doesn’t even attempt to hide its derivative inspirations. It takes the most basic parts of “Death Sentence,” “Death Wish,” and “Peppermint,” all films with some gritty action but largely interchangeable and middling at best.
This flick would feel right at home among these films, which is not a compliment and yet another testament to how large that backwards step feels. Revenge is a tale as old as time, so I can forgive “Silent Night” for wanting to take the simple approach with its protagonist. It’s everything else that surrounds it that falters. The villains are indistinguishable, stereotypical Latino gangsters that feel ripped straight out of early 90s Los Angeles gang films. As if both Woo and Lynn hadn’t been to American in 30 years and assumed that LA is stuck in 1992. It’s hard enough to root for a literal silent assassin with minimal motivations. It’s even harder to root against antagonists that don’t seem to have anything to do other than just be “Gang member #2.”
Part of the charm of over the top action is being willing to embrace the absurdity. I don’t need logic in action films, but I do need it to make sense. “Silent Night” has neither, being both illogical and nonsensical even in the world its attempting to build. Take “Face/Off” as an example. There is no logic to the mumbo jumbo science of face swapping, but within the context of the film itself it makes sense. It doesn’t need to be real as long as we can buy into the fact that it happens here in this world, and no matter how fantastical things get we can suspend belief and go along for the ride. It is so bland and mundane and charmless, that it can’t overcome its own nonsense, depicting a Los Angeles that doesn’t exist but set in the present as if it does and asking the audience to just accept it blindly without in world explanation or reason. In something like “Face/Off,” we are also given balls to the wall commitments from the likes of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, which help to sell the ridiculousness of it all because we have charismatic surrogates to guide us through the carnage. The removal of dialogue and painting everything with the broadest of strokes robs “Silent Night” of these capabilities, making it insufferable the longer it drolls on in silence.
Joel Kinnaman (“For All Mankind“) is doing his best to win us over without words, but while I’m not a Kinneman hater he simply isn’t given enough to overcome the things that hold the film back. He works hard to be facially expressive, and understands action and Woo’s unique style but it simply isn’t enough to matter. I’m not ready to fully fault Kinnaman, as its the film he’s in and not necessarily what he’s doing it that hold it back. However, Chow Yun-fat, John Claude Van Damme, and Nic Cage he is not, and putting someone already charactered as a relatively bland action star in a bland film is probably not the best choice. Honestly, none of these critiques would matter if “Silent Night” just hit the ground running and let Woo go off with bombastic, relentless action. Instead, nearly 70 minutes of a 104 minute runtime is spent watching Kinneman wallow in grief and train with overly long training montages. 30 minutes of stellar action does not a good film make, and it takes so much time to get going that by the time the guns start blasting, you’re checking your watch to see how much longer this thing has left.
I guess if you’re just looking for bullets to fly and some gritty, unabashed violence without anything to it, you’ll enjoy “Silent Night.” If you enjoy style over substance in the most mundane and trivial of ways, you’ll enjoy whatever Woo is doing here. If you’re perfectly fine with not caring about anyone or anything in a film and just watching people die in brutal fashion, a film void of heroism and just downright nasty, you’ll enjoy “Silent NIght.” If only want about 30 minutes of good action and a plethora of sad dad crying and doing pullups for 90% of your movie without any dialogue, you’ll enjoy “Silent Night.” And if you’re still terrified that MS-13 is going to invade your white suburban neighborhood and have an all out gang war for no reason whatsoever, you’ll enjoy “Silent Night.”
I for one don’t enjoy any of those things, and didn’t enjoy “Silent Night” at all.
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
“Silent Night” is now playing in theaters everywhere. You can watch the trailer below.
