Silent Night is a holiday action movie mostly devoid of dialogue. After his son is killed by a stray bullet in a drive by shooting Brian(Joel Kinnaman) chases down the perpetrators and is shot in the throat losing his voice. He spends the next year preparing to exact his revenge.
Kinnaman is not a particularly good actor nor does he have much presence, he has yet to show the same promise he did in his breakout role in AMC's The Killing. He is certainly not a leading man and giving him no dialogue further hamstrings his already limited abilities. At his best he is passable like he was earlier this year in Sympathy For The Devil but without an actual star to play off of his performance is DOA. Much like No One Will Save You the lack of dialogue doesn't really work and feels very transparently like a script contrivance, its distracting, boring, and renders the characters less engaging. The supporting cast, inexplicably also burdened with no dialogue even though they are not mute, have little to do and don't make much if any impression.
The movie looks great, director John Woo hasn't lost his visual acumen and its a treat to have him release a US based movie, but the script is dog shit, regressive, and offensive. Its unclear where the movie is even taking place, it seems as if its in LA but then there are a bunch of Texas license plates so maybe its along the border somewhere? The depiction of Latinx organized crime as defacto slathering monsters is insane and racist. Similar to 2018's Peppermint this element of the plot is baffling and feels straight out of the Reagan era. There are things to criticize about 1974's Death Wish, the originator of this type of movie, but at least the baddies in it were somewhat generic(not to mention its a far superior film than almost all of its copy-cats). Once the action finally starts, which takes far too long, its not particularly interesting nor is Kinnaman particularly adept or fluid with its execution. For a holiday action movie look to 2022's Violent Night or 2020's Fatman.
An absolute waste of time.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Don't See It.
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