Silent Night Review: John Woo's (Mostly) Dialogue-Free Action Flick Is Like One Long Training Montage
A man in a Christmas sweater (Joel Kinnaman) runs through the streets of a city on the day of Christmas Eve chasing after two cars. Meanwhile, the occupants of the vehicles are engaged in a shootout, firing machine guns at each other with unrelenting ferocity. Eventually, one of the cars slams into a fire hydrant, flipping into the air while water explodes upward all in glorious slow-motion. John Woo is back. "Silent Night," is the latest from Woo, the Hong Kong auteur responsible for some of the best action scenes in movie history. The set-up sounds perfect: a Christmas-set action flick about a man seeking revenge!
But "Silent Night" isn't quite what you expect. For one thing, the Christmas holiday almost seems like a complete afterthought. Aside from a few shots of decorations here and there, there's nothing particularly Christmasy here, and those hoping for that season iconography set against Woo's operatic violence may be disappointed. Then there's the action. To be clear: there's plenty of it ... eventually. But after the opening scene, Woo and screenwriter Robert Archer Lynn take their time working their way back to the action. It might try your patience.
One long training montage
The training montage is an action movie staple, something you saw a lot of in the 1980s. During these montages, heroes would be seen pumping themselves up to get ready for one final fight. They'd lift weights, they'd load up on guns, and they'd get nice and sweaty. With "Silent Night," Woo seems to be trying to stage an almost feature-length training montage. The man we saw running at the beginning of the film is Brian, and his young son was killed in the crossfire of a gangland shootout between those two cars. During the ensuing violence, Brian was shot in the neck and lost his voice. This gives "Silent Night" its hook — it's almost entirely dialogue-free. Not only is Brian silent, but so are those around him, including the gang members, Brian's suffering wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno), and a detective (Scott Mescudi) looking into the case. Aside from some voices heard over radios, everyone else is (mostly) speechless. When characters talk, their words are muffled, or drowned out, always indecipherable.
After the Christmas Eve murder of his son, Brian descends into hard-drinking depression. Time passes. And then he decides to get revenge. In April, he flips his calendar to December, and on the box for DECEMBER 24 he writes in marker: "KILL THEM ALL." Hell yeah. From here, the film takes on its lengthy training form. After all, Brian is supposed to be a normal guy, not a trained killer. He has to build himself up in order to get his vengeance. So he starts lifting weights, buying guns, and watching YouTube videos on combat and defense. He even buys a cool car and soups it up to become a weapon on wheels.
Action melodrama
On paper, "Silent Night" is little more than your standard revenge actioner. It's basically a riff on "Death Wish." What makes it stand out, aside from its dialogue-free set-up, is Woo's eye for both action and melodrama. The film is loaded with little touches, most of them unapologetically over-the-top, like when a tear spilling down someone's cheek suddenly match-cuts into a bullet casing clattering onto the ground.
Still, "Silent Night" feels light. Even at 77 years old, Woo continues to have a firm grasp on creating stunning action beats. But "Silent Night" feels like one of the filmmaker's slighter efforts. In short, it should be a lot cooler than it ends up being. Kinnaman's protagonist is appropriately badass, but since he never gets to say a word, we never really learn much about who he is or what makes him tick. Revenge is all he lives for, and that only gets you so far when creating a main character. None of the other characters around him make much of an impact, and all the bad guys are interchangeable thugs with no real characterizations other than plentiful tattoos and scowls.
And yet, those who have been missing Woo's masterful touch on action will likely find plenty to embrace here. Eventually, the long training montage ends, giving way to a grand finale of ballet-like violence, with plenty of shadows, smoke, and slow-motion action. It all ends up being a touch forgettable by the time the end credits roll, but the journey to get there is never dull.
/Film Rating: 6 out of 10