Silent Night Review: John Woo’s Hollywood Return Is Messy, Guilty Fun

I don’t typically like the term “guilty pleasure,” especially when it comes to genre movies. Whatever we think is good or interesting belongs in the same category of thought and discussion, regardless of its packaging. But, I have to admit, I feel a little guilty about liking Silent Night. I’ve often found it rewarding to think too hard about films that don’t actively invite it, but some that felt solid can crumble under the extra pressure in retrospect, something I usually take into account in a review. In this case, for whatever reason, no amount of clarity about its hollowness has put a dent in my enjoyment. So, all I can offer in the way of criticism is a glimpse into my cognitive dissonance — an accounting of all the reasons I shouldn’t recommend Silent Night, and why I do anyway.

The premise of this action movie from director John Woo, his first Hollywood film in 20 years, is simple. Narratively, it tracks Brian’s (Joel Kinnaman) path to violent revenge on the local gang whose reckless gunfire killed his young son on Christmas. Brian is also shot in the throat by the gang’s leader (Harold Torres), leaving him voiceless and setting up the movie’s virtually dialogue-free storytelling device. The promise of this is a straight-forward, no-nonsense genre exercise from one of action’s most celebrated filmmakers. But Silent Night begins in medias res, as Brian, in a blood-splattered Christmas sweater, chases down the rival gangs as they spray gunfire from moving cars. We then spend time with him and his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) as he recovers at the hospital, and only when they return home days later do we revisit the inciting incident and learn about their son’s death. It’s the emotional equivalent of flashing back to John Wick’s puppy dying after he’s back in the game. Not so straight-forward, after all.

Similarly, much time is dedicated to Brian’s preparation, as we’re led to believe that, unlike Mr. Wick, he’s no trained killer. He has to build himself into an action hero from the ground up. Woo gets a lot out of this idea and, central to my enjoyment of the movie, things are constantly going wrong for Brian. Kinnaman is physically imposing and can ragefully scowl with the best of them, and his character often curates his image to look as textbook-cool as possible, but he repeatedly screws up in ways that make the flow of each fight difficult to predict. An action hero that looks the part but isn’t all that good at it is a fun character to follow in a brutal revenge thriller. But, if this is to be so, why open the movie on Brian in full badass mode, pre-training? Style overrides substance in these early storytelling decisions, just as it will in later ones.

At the same time, the style is one of two things holding Silent Night together for me. Woo is a director with vision, and he takes well to this visual-forward approach to storytelling. The movie plays with lighting in an evocative way: Early on, after life has resumed for Brian and Saya, their growing divide is depicted by placing Brian in a dark garage illuminated by a single skylight, while his wife looks in from their brightly lit kitchen. He is also prone to the occasional reverie, and our cue that he’s slipped into a flashback is a sudden shift to warm, yellow lighting. “Silent Night” describes not only his Christmas Eve rampage to come, but his new state of being, as if grief and injury have plunged him into a voiceless, sunless place. Touches like this kept me invested, even as the story should’ve lost me. Kinnaman is the other pillar – his physical, expressive performance style provides valuable emotional clarity, and he’s great at selling the pain of his fights, both of which keep the action scenes compelling.

My praise for Woo and Kinnaman’s choices shouldn’t create the impression that this dialogue-less experiment is successful, however. Brian is the only one on screen who can be reasonably called a character; everyone else is at best a sketch, at worst offensively empty. Silent Night‘s Madonna-whore complex would be more distracting if its female characters were more significant, and Kid Cudi’s Detective Vassel is so lacking in screen presence that it seems intentional until his role goes beyond passive observer. The action set pieces are clear, but the emotional throughline is not at all sustaining. Brian is overcome by the memory of his son ad nauseum, sometimes mid-fight, and it plays as more absurd than grounding – the filmmakers try to extract too much from what is only meant to be an engine for the story. The relationship between Brian and his kid is completely undeveloped beyond the obvious, so how invested in it can we really be?

Then, there’s the question of the movie’s outlook – perhaps the true source of my inner conflict. I won’t argue there’s any nuance in Silent Night‘s stance on revenge. Whatever conflictedness I interpreted in Brian’s failings is pretty much cleared up by the ending, and there’s little doubt these gangbangers are framed as entirely deserving of a violent death. I can also envision being frustrated by trying to take this story seriously at a dramatic level, which certain choices, especially at the beginning, seem to encourage. But how seriously does the film really take itself? When he settles on violence as the answer, Brian flips ahead on his calendar and scribbles “Kill Them All” on December 24, like he’s scheduling an appointment. In one scene, while choking a guy, he has a vision of his son, and cliché might dictate this as a moment of wavering or moral awakening – a he-wouldn’t-have-wanted-this epiphany. Instead, he chokes harder. Silent Night winks at us as often as it tries for genuine drama, and I went along for the ride. Whichever tone you choose to accept will likely determine whether you have as much fun with it as I did.