Silent Night

I am a big John Woo fan, especially with his early work in Hong Kong and his American films from the aughts. His peak was Hard Boiled (my favorite of his body of work) and on the American side, Face/Off.

Silent Night is John Woo’s return to American cinema after 20 years. A lot has changed since Woo’s last Americna film, Paycheck – the biggest change is the highly stylized action style introduced in the movie John Wick.

With Silent Night, Woo sticks with his tried and true style from his previous films. This is both good and bad. For those of us who like his earlier work, this is a great throwback to it and a reminder of classic action cinema defined by Woo. But, I am not sure new audiences will take to this older style of action cinema.

Silent Night follows Brain (Kinnaman) who is dealing with the death of his son. His son died from a stray bullet that was fired in a gang war. There’s not much more to the story. This is not a deep story.

There is one line of dialogue at 17 minutes and then basically no more direct spoken dialogue. There is some dialogue via radio, but other than that the main characters never speak. It is a gimmick and I understand why they chose to do this, but it unfortunately also neuters the movie’s emotional throughline.

For a 104 minute long movie, it sure feels much longer. The payoff is good, but not great. And the ending was quite weak.

What makes Silent Night watchable is Joel Kinnaman who is the emotional center of the movie and adds so much humanity to the chracter Brian. I love that Brian is not a superhuman. He shows fear; he stops and seemingly shows regrets for what he has done; and he gets tired as he progresses through his mission.

Joel Kinnaman would make a great Punisher. More inline with the Thomas Jane interpretation where Frank Castle is built like a normal human.

Texas seems to be quite a violent place and is portrayed a lot like Detroit was portrayed in the original Robocop – not Kinnaman’s Robocop.

Silent Night is a better movie than the movie Woo made after it: A remake of The Killer. It is worth a watch, but I probably will not be revisiting this movie.

Streamed on Starz.