Spoilers are dashing through the snow.

I was prepared to love this one. Let’s be direct here that revenge films are mainly power fantasies where we get to unleash our chaotic selves. This is John Woo, who is not a stranger to action films either, so it was really hard not to have high expectations. Unfortunately, this is not one of John Woo’s best. We’ll go into what’s missing here, but I will preface this by saying I might be missing the forest for the trees. If you can squint and find the fun while missing the flawed, more power to you.

(Credit: Lionsgate)

Silent Night (2023) was directed by John Woo and written by Robert Archer Lynn. A family’s happiness during Christmas time is interrupted when two gangster factions drive by while shooting each other. A stray bullet hits a young child and the desperate father tries to stop one of the cars. As a result, the kid dies and the man, Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) is left with a bullet in his throat that renders him mute. Grieving and full of hatred, Brian vows to have revenge against the gangsters that terrorize his neighborhood.

I will applaud the filmmakers for taking risks. The movie is filmed with mostly zero dialog. There’s background chatter and often enough, people just emote their feelings visually. But there are loopholes in the logic when Brian is meeting people to get information or buy illegal weapons, it’s obvious some written notes needed to change hands. It would have been nice if they had shown some initial hardship due to his obvious disability. The other risk however, is that John Woo intentionally decided to highlight the pain and the loss as the main focus. This means we’re not getting the usual action comedy humour glints to break the tension. The movie is going for dark and brooding all the way to the end, without any wink or nod in its action set pieces that would crack a smile.

It doesn’t work, mostly because of the deadpan seriousness throughout its runtime. The main character in this storyline is not former special forces navy seal or trained soldier. He’s an electrician who starts to train by watching videos on his phone. There’s no moment in which he seeks out any combat training imparted by professionals or reveals a background in martial arts or weapons training. He does make mistakes during his first outing to nab one of the gang’s contacts and even gets stabbed in the leg, which somehow doesn’t mess him up for life. So, the realism is rather selective here.

Not recommended. I believe the audience expecting this kind of film want the entertainment value and guilty pleasure of a power fantasy, i.e. revenge plot. Unfortunately, the focus never leaves the grieving process which is counter to the toxic decision to hunt down and murder people. This is not to mention the entire DIY process we’re shown as Brian literally learns knife fighting from a video. Perhaps worth a watch if you run into it via a streaming service, but don’t expect much entertainment value.

That will do for now.