Not So Calm, Not So Bright

‘Tis the season for headshots. From the producer of John Wick comes Silent Night, a Christmas-themed revenge action flick directed by John Woo and starring Joel Kinnaman (For All Mankind). The man who brought us The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled, and Face/Off taking on the John Wick formula is a surefire smash hit, right?  About that…

The film begins en medias res with Brian (Kinnaman) chasing after the two gang vehicles who just killed his son with a stray bullet from their sub-machine guns (?) while their drivers were shooting at each other. I suppose this unarmed dad—still wearing his ugly Rudolph sweater—wants to give them a stern lecture. Brian causes one of the vehicles to crash by swinging an improvised pole from a dumpster at it (?), but then the gangsters shoot him in the throat. He survives, but his vocal cords are fucked.

SILENT NIGHT ★★ (2/5 stars)
Directed by: John Woo
Written by: Robert Archer Lynn
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Harold Torres, and Kid Cudi
Running time: 107 mins

The next few months see Brian falling into alcoholism and icing out his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) until he suddenly decides that he needs to get his act together and *checks notes* “kill them all” on Christmas Eve. If there was ever a film that was a perfect candidate to be titled ‘Bro, Just Go to Therapy: The Movie’, it would be this one. There are training montages as Brian does chin-ups and kettlebell lifts, learns how to fire a pistol, buys guns from black market dealers, and learns how to drift his sportscar. I’m not making this up.

Brian finds out enough info on the gang members responsible for his kid’s death, all members of a fictional Mexican MS-13 analog called the G-17. He does so by visiting a local detective named Dennis Vassell (Kid Cudi) and snapping photos of the most wanted mugshot board he conveniently has set up in his office. During all of this we get plenty of lingering shots of Saya crying as Brian becomes more hyper focused on his vendetta until she finally up and leaves him. Good for you, girl! But none of that matters. What matters is he’s going to dole out vigilante justice to those Mexicans and your dad’s going to love it.

Silent Night hasn’t much shame about being a John Wick clone, but it should have some shame for being without the substance and — surprisingly — without noteworthy style, despite Woo’s legendary eye. There’s also the odd choice of the entire film having little to no dialogue when only Kinnaman’s character has a vocal affliction. That’s a lot of effort or lack thereof just to make your film’s title mean something. Still, Silent Night’s biggest transgression by far is that it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. It wants to be some amalgamation of John Wick and Brawl in Cell Block 99, resulting in a gritty “good guy with a gun” wet dream with some light copaganda.

This isn’t a total wash, however. It’s still John Woo and you’re going to get terrific stunt work and some beautiful camera movement. The juxtaposed sentimentality is there. And the trademark dual pistols are there, too. But I regret to report that even the stylings of Woo can’t save this one from feeling like a weird exercise in masculinity with zero self-awareness.