Let me start things off by saying something that I do feel is relatively obvious:
Having no dialogue in your movie is an absolute gimmick. It is not some statement on a director’s creativity. It’s not a trend that other films are assured to follow; it is a flat-out gimmick, a flagrant display of style over substance, and the sheer audacity of doing it in a major motion picture being released in a theater should raise the curiosity of any regular moviegoer to give it a try admittingly.
That isn’t to say that it can’t be done correctly. There’s a whole silent era of film that had a couple of bangers admittingly (METROPOLIS, NOSFERATU, and THE GOLD RUSH). The Academy Award winner for Best Picture of 2011 was a tribute film to that era called THE ARTIST, which was obviously done exceptionally well. The director Nicholas Refn has made two damn near silent films that have been critically claimed (DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES). This is a gimmick that can be done correctly. But you have to justify the gimmick. You can’t just do it for the sake of it being there.
SILENT NIGHT is a film that takes this gimmick to its extremes. It takes a relatively routine revenge story about a man hunting down gang members who killed his baby boy in the crossfires of a shootout while losing his voice in the process….and completely submerging it in the dredges of this gimmick. It’s not a film involving one character, nor is it done like a television bottle episode where it’s only restricted to two or three locations. If it were that the extent to which they milk this gimmick might have been justified. But instead, we have some bull s***.
This is a film that includes:
- A marriage that is barely surviving due to the trauma of the incident.
- A detective investigating the murder *Multiple flashbacks of characters before the inciting event of the movie takes place and…
- It’s a large shootout (because, of course, it’s John Woo, after all) where the protagonist and the large group of antagonists are strategically trying to survive, all while doing so through… Blinking, grunting, and heavy breathing.
This is a movie where scenes take place in hospitals, police stations, and warehouses. For some reason, even though the film’s main character is NOT HEARING IMPAIRED, everybody who interacts with him chooses not to speak with him, given all that he’s going through. One’s suspension of disbelief takes an aggressive beating throughout this film.
And I know it’s John Woo, okay? He’s a legend, okay? But let’s be honest here: is this at least a return to form? Sadly no. He told The Hollywood Reporter that he purposely scaled back the entertainment action style he’s known for because he wanted the action to “support the emotional drama” happening on screen. The result is a Shasta Cola version of JOHN WICK. This is ironic because JOHN WICK is a franchise that maximizes the style John Woo used to do. If anybody can come back and reinvent this modern-day action film, it would be Woo. He just doesn’t want to do that anymore, I guess.
And yes, this is a Christmas movie if you couldn’t tell by the title. Their Christmas decorations are all around, and Joel Kinnaman’s character is wearing an ugly reindeer sweater, too. It counts.
I had real hope for this thing. My disappointment knows no bounds. The humbug that I feel is truly from the depths of my very soul.
At the time of this review, it was available theatrical.
