SILENT NIGHT (2023) – John Woo is back and delivers!

Christmas comes early for fans of action thrillers ridden with gratuitous violence and gun power. Silent Night is an unrestrained orgy of revenge violence that happens to take place during Christmas time. It is right up the alley of what director John Woo does best and marks his return to directing an English language feature since his last American film Paycheck in 2003. John Woo is of course legendary for his early Hong Kong action films which includes A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992).

At the ripe old age of 77 this year, John Woo shows that he has not lost his touch. Silent Night is a compact high-octane fireball of a movie that will please his diehard fans as he not only delivers on the almost non-stop action but also takes on a challenging approach to tell the story. To emphasize on the “Silent” in the film’s title “Silent Night”, there is virtually no dialogue throughout the film! Instead, the whole story is conveyed mainly through the body language of the performers aided by the occasional exchange of text messages on the phone between various characters, TV announcements and newspaper clips. This is a refreshing approach on an otherwise familiar tale of an ordinary man who turns into a deadly one-man vigilante to avenge the dead of his child under the hands of local gangsters (think Death Wish, The Punisher, Taken, and John Wick just to name a few). The entire film unfolds effortlessly without the need for any of the characters to utter a single word (well, okay maybe a few instances with some mumbling)! Instead, John Woo lets the car crashes, bullets and hand to hand combats do the talking. I dare say, Silent Night might follow the route of Die Hard and end up being a cult Christmas favourite in years to come.

Joel Kinnaman does a more than capable job as the lead here in what is possibly his personal career best. We feel all the emotions from his performance which becomes very involving. We last saw Joel earlier this year in another violent movie Sympathy for the Devil with Nicolas Cage in a similarly gritty role. Joel has potential to become a major movie star given the right choices. He can handle the action as well as vulnerable sensitivity scenes with conviction.

There is however one thing that disturbs me greatly about Silent Night and films of this genre. That is it represents what I see as a form of glorification of gunpower and killing as entertainment. Like it or not, gun misuse and mass shootings in America have become almost a weekly affair and films like these may invariably feed into the sick minds of real-life killers out there. It is a guilty pleasure for me to enjoy a good violent movie from time to time, but I am conscience that these films may not be doing the modern society any service. Perhaps we need to rethink how such themes could be depicted in the future without the damaging side effects. Instead of a dialogue-less approach, can a violent story be told in a blood-less or gunfire-less manner? But then, directors like John Woo may be out of a job and forced into retirement.