Cast:
Joel Kinnaman (Brian Godlock), Scott Mescudi (Detective Dennis Vassel), Harold Torres (Playa), and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Saya Godlock) Directed by John Woo (#030 - Face/Off, #336 - Broken Arrow (1996), #1100 - Mission: Impossible 2, #1855 - Hard Target, #1875 - A Better Tomorrow)
Review:
"The biggest difference for me now is that the action should be realistic. It should serve the drama. In the past, my action was pretty much supposed to be entertaining. Silent Night’s action looks more realistic and more powerful, and it gives the audience more of a feeling instead of just being entertaining.”
Curiosity matters sometimes. What we have here is a film composed of just background noise. The director? Oh, just John Woo, who had last directed an American feature film with Paycheck (2003). Of course, he had never stopped making films when moving past his sixties and seventies, he just branched out back to his roots when it came to not one but two Chinese-Hong Kong two-part films (that, and he stated that he no longer was being offered quality scripts). The script for this film was done by Robert Archer Lynn, who had a few scripts to his credit such as, well, Already Dead (2007). Woo expressed his excitement at the script for what it could bring in terms of challenge as an experiment that he could "feel the freedom" for. As you probably guessed, one of the production companies for the film was Thunder Road Films, which happened to be one of the spearheading forces behind the John Wick series (a sign of the influence Woo had on filmmakers today).
Cynically, one could wonder how an action movie plays out differently to those who watch with as little distraction as possible as opposed to those who are a bit looser with attention. But in general, the conclusion I come to at the end of the 104-minute runtime is that it all is just fine. It isn't great or terrible, it just is...fine. In a sea of action films that are either ready for DVD viewing or on demand that do their share of budget filmmaking, one will find a lean feature here that lives and dies and just how much one appreciates the curiosity of watching a movie that goes through the general motions of a revenge flick without dialogue to chatter away with. If you like a film that goes through the basics with likeable enough people behind it, this is the one for you. Kinnaman does well enough with the material required in terms of building worthy interest in seeing where the descent of voiceless torment goes when believing that the only way to dig out of that pit is to set forth on a singular-minded goal of oblivion. His intensity in the eyes is what matters most, and he makes that grief one to endure to the very end in meaningful tension. Granted, it may not take much to really care about a revenge thriller with a specific type of lean/mean tick of action, but he fits the bill without playing to just the minimum. The others, well, can only go so far. Think of the movie more as an experiment rather than a strait-laced quiet film, because it can only go so far with people simply deciding to not speak once before one just goes "sure". The film is so devoted to its goal of no-talk, DIY-action that it can only work to those who really invest in what a film composed of chatter can do. Action films with little dialogue aren't that new (I mean, you could just cite The Three Musketeers [1921]), but the general execution of it here works in that bleak sense of the word when it comes to the beat going on when it goes into gear. People live and die but things move on. It didn't need to be a detailed action film when it comes to theatrics, and Woo knows that. Action movies come and go, with this one being just fine in its execution that is more curious than gimmick in the nicest way possible. It can't rank as one of Woo's best films but giving it a whirl to pay attention to in the endgame is not a bad idea one could have for the time of season.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
