Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (February 7, 2024)
In 2021, Silent Night offered a Christmas tale that mixed dark comedy and the apocalypse. An unrelated film of the same title pursues violent action via 2023’s Silent Night.
In 2021, Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) lost his young son Taylor when the boy got killed in the middle of a gang shootout. When Brian attempts to pursue the criminals, he winds up shot in the throat and left for dead.
Brian survives but can no longer speak. Consumed with grief and anger, he plans to use Christmas Eve 2022 – the one year anniversary of Taylor’s death – to take revenge on those responsible.
25 years ago, John Woo felt like just about the hottest thing in Hollywood. His 1980s/early 1990s Hong Kong action flicks earned him a reputation as a terrific genre director, and this led him to America for 1993’s Hard Target.
While not a major hit, that one turned a profit. It also led Woo to bigger projects like 1996’s Broken Arrow, 1997’s Face/Off and 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2.
A massive hit, that last one earned $860 million worldwide. That figure leaves it as the Mission: Impossible franchise’s biggest hit even after nearly 24 years and five more films.
Perhaps eager for something more “serious”, Woo then made 2002’s expensive war drama Windtalkers. Rather than earn Woo a new audience, the film received weak reviews and lost a boatload of money.
And there went Woo’s career in Hollywood, essentially. 2003’s action/sci-fi hybrid Paycheck didn’t flop but it also didn’t make much – if any – money and Woo went back to Asia for the rest of his career.
Until now, as Night marks Woo’s first American movie in 20 years. I’d love to say Woo returns with a bang, but Night seems unlikely to make US audiences feel like they’ve missed much over the last two decades.
Though Night does come with an unusual twist, as it almost entirely eschews dialogue. Of course, it makes sense that Brian doesn’t speak – he can’t – but this extends to all the other characters as well.
Which feels like a gimmick, and an awkward one, as it just makes no sense that the movie plays out with so little spoken material. Night comes across as wholly contrived due to this decision because it never feels natural or makes any sense that the participants don’t talk to each other.
In theory, this could work because Woo always excelled as a visual storyteller. His Hollywood movies tended to hit snarls when they dealt with dialogue and characters, so the manner in which Night emphasizes the physical over the oral seems like a choice that Woo could make succeed.
But he doesn’t, partly because of the contrived bent I mentioned. The extremes to which Night avoids dialogue tends to come across as silly and illogical.
Even if I ignore that, Night simply never turns into an engaging action flick. Extremely light on plot, Woo struggles to find positive ways to fill 104 minutes of cinematic real estate.
This means that after a violent opening scene, Night dawdles. We spend a lot of time with Brian as he mourns and then prepares for his mission.
Most of this comes across as filler. Little of it does anything to really develop the tale or roles, so it just feels like the movie drags while we wait for the inevitable Big Action Setpieces.
When those arrive, they fail to add real zest to the proceedings. So many other filmmakers co-opted Woo’s style over the years that what once seemed fresh now comes across as par for the course, and Woo fails to find new flavors to add spice to the proceedings.
Much of the problem relates to the thinness of the characters, though. Largely due to that lack of dialogue, the roles never develop, so the battles fail to provide the intrigue that they might if we knew more about the participants.
If shot as a 20-minute short, Silent Night might’ve offered a slam-bang effort. At 104 minutes, though, it sags and drags.
