‘Silent Night’: Review

Dir: John Woo. US. 2023. 104mins

Revenge is a dish best served wordlessly in John Woo’s first American film in two decades. Silent Night sports a clever premise — the film has virtually no dialogue as Joel Kinnaman’s grieving father methodically prepares to get even with those who killed his son — but maintaining the conceit proves a difficult task, leaving viewers to wait impatiently for the later reels when our antihero can finally dispense justice in as grisly a manner as possible.

 The gimmick is given more care than the characterisation

The Hong Kong action auteur conjures up a few of his trademark over-the-top sequences, but this tale of bloody vengeance is not the most satisfying delivery device for Woo’s unique brand of melodramatic, slow-mo carnage. Lionsgate, which releases the picture in the US on December 1 (when it also plays the Red Sea Festival) will nevertheless hope it caters to genre fans uninterested in the season’s prestigious pictures or family fair. (Woo supporters should be especially excited to see his first US production since 2003’s disappointing Paycheck.) Kinnaman is a B-movie staple so, even if theatrical grosses underwhelm, this shoot-’em-up may still be a strong performer on streaming and on-demand.

It is just before Christmas and everyman Brian (Kinnaman) is grief-stricken, chasing after gang members who inadvertently gunned down his young son in the midst of their turf war. Left to die after being shot in the throat by the vicious gangster Playa (Harold Torres), Brian barely survives, but life-saving surgery leaves him permanently mute. Undeterred, he devotes every waking hour to getting in shape and becoming a weapons expert for the moment he will get revenge on Playa. In fact, he knows exactly when he will do it: Christmas Eve of the following year.

Brian’s mute condition opens the door for the film’s intriguing hook, presenting a story in which the only words spoken are overheard on a police radio or in diegetic songs — not by any of the characters. This is far from a silent film, however, with Marco Beltrami’s adrenalised score adding extra intensity, accompanied by the myriad grunts and groans uttered by Brian and others as they engage in shootouts and hand-to-hand combat. (Every punch sounds inordinately loud, every gun blast is like an explosion.) 

Initially, Silent Night has fun with its premise, finding novel ways to avoid dialogue. (An early scene involves Brian waking up in the hospital, his concerned wife, portrayed by Catalina Sandino Moreno, going to comfort him – but, observing through a closed window, we cannot hear anything.) Yet Robert Archer Lynn’s screenplay struggles to keep the premise believable, resorting to gimmicky exposition and unlikely moments of silence between characters to sustain the trick. 

Much rides on Kinnaman, whose expressive face must communicate his character’s sorrow, guilt, anger and obsession. Inevitably, the performance occasionally devolves into pantomime, with the actor’s wordless looks growing monotonous. It does not help matters that Woo fails to find a fresh approach to this study of Brian’s stoic descent into violence. Montages of him working out, learning how to use firearms and becoming a world-class driver feel perfunctory, and the dialogue-free conceit keeps director and star from plumbing this man’s tormented depths. As much as we watch Brian preparing for his fateful showdown with Playa, he is never a fascinating enigma nor a compelling cautionary tale. The gimmick is given more care than the characterisation. 

By the time Brian is ready to put his plan into motion, he has long since alienated his wife — poor Sandino Moreno is reduced to multiple scenes of quietly crying about her dead son and emotionally checked-out husband — and Woo shifts comfortably into muscular action set pieces. Gritty car chases, brutal knife fights and flagrant gun battles highlight Silent Night’s second half, the filmmaker preferring concentrated mayhem to the operatic flourishes of his signature pictures like The Killers or Face/Off. 

To be sure, the overkill often bleeds over into comedy — especially in ludicrously gratuitous scenes such as a slow-mo shot of a bullet passing clean through a bad guy’s head, gore hurtling toward the camera — and one suspects that Woo relishes the opportunity to pile on a massive body count. Kinnaman, too, feels more at ease during the film’s violent segments, never winking at the audience while his seemingly ordinary dad suddenly (and improbably) becomes a high-octane killing machine. But there is a delicious irony to the fact that this high-concept film is most effective when the bullets start flying: who has ever cared about the dialogue in an action scene?