SILENT NIGHT : Tuesday 12th December 2023.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'SILENT NIGHT' earlier this week, and this American action film is Co-Produced and Directed by John Woo whose prior feature film output includes 'A Better Tomorrow' and 'A Better Tomorrow II' in 1986 and '87, 'The Killer' in 1989, 'Bullet in the Head' in 1990, 'Hard Boiled' in 1992, and then his first Hollywood actioner 'Hard Target' in 1993 followed by 'Broken Arrow' in 1996, 'Face/Off' in 1997, 'Mission : Impossible 2' in 2000, 'Paycheck' in 2003 with 'Red Cliff : Part I' and 'Red Cliff : Part II' in 2008 and 2009 amongst a whole swathe of others. This film is John Woo's first American production since 'Paycheck' twenty years ago, and was released in the US on 1st December and here in Australia last week, has so far grossed US$7.5M and has garnered mixed reviews.

The films opens up with a man wearing a Christmas jersey with a jingle bell dangling from his neck running down the alleyways and streets of a city with bloodied hands and blood stains on his clothes. Meanwhile two cars are involved in rampaging gang related shootout, with the running man clearly intent on tracking them down. He does so, but in the aftermath the gang's leader easily identifiable by the tattoo's of an intricate spiders web covering his neck, head and half his face clambers out of the wreckage of one of the vehicles and shoots the running man in the throat, and leaves him bleeding out. 

The man, we learn is Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman), who survives and is operated on and stitched back up in hospital, but his vocal chords are so badly damaged that his is no longer able to speak. We later learn through flashbacks that Brian is an electrician and is living a happy life in the city of Las Palomas, Texas with his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and young son Taylor Michael. On Christmas Eve 2021, Brian and Taylor are using a new bicycle on their front lawn, which Saya is recording on her smartphone. They are caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting in the middle of a gang war and Taylor is killed by a stray bullet, which prompted Brian to chase after the perpetrators. 

Brian is discharged from hospital on 26th January and returns home with Saya to a lifeless house, with now very sad looking Christmas decorations still hanging up, and presents for their son still under the tree. Brian and Saya grieve over Taylor's death and Saya tries to be emotionally supportive to Brian during his physical recovery, but Brian becomes cold and distant and begins drinking heavily and locking himself away in their garage. Easter comes and goes, and at this point Brian has an awakening and becomes focused squarely on pursuing revenge for Taylor.

Saya becomes emotionally overwhelmed and leaves

Brian, who plans to kill all the gang members involved in Taylor's death on Christmas Eve in 2022. Over the course of the next eight months Brian builds up his strength and stamina through rigorous bodybuilding exercises, familiarising himself with deadly weapons and sharp shooting, self-defence training and mastering his defensive driving skills in his souped-up pre-owned Ford Mustang. 

At one point, Brian visits Detective Dennis Vassel (Scott Mescudi), who offered to help in his son's case, but with the Detective unavailable Brian instead uses this opportunity to gather information on Playa's (Harold Torres) gang and begins reconnaissance on them, collecting evidence that will help put them behind bars (if they live to see the day that is!) Saya attempts to contact Brian, expressing that she and his parents are worried about him, but he continues to ignore her text messages. 

Brian attacks and abducts a member of Playa's gang, hurting and threatening him in an attempt to gather written information on the gang's underworld activities. The thug briefly manages to escape from the garage where he was bound, gagged and strung up only for Brian to subdue him in a fight through the laundry and into the kitchen. Brian later delivers the bound and unconscious thug to Vassel's house, along with a Christmas card, containing his intent to kill Playa and his gang, and a USB stick with the evidence he has collected, along with the thug's bloodstained written contributions to his information. He also sends two of the thug's amputated fingers to Playa, intimidating him.

Brian spends the entire night of Christmas Eve 2022 killing the members of Playa's gang one by one, at times interrupting their crimes in the process. After stealing a cell phone from a thug and using it to record a video of him being shot twice in the back and sending it to Playa, the gang leader sends a group text for his men to return to his HQ. Brian takes the opportunity to trap and kill them all there. 

Following much close quarter combat involving guns, knives, fists, feet and the occasional explosive device as Brian inches ever closer to Playa, he is confronted by Detective Vassel, following up on the information sent by Brian earlier in the day. Initially pointing their drawn weapons at each another, they both silently put them down and agree to work together to finish off Playa. 

Playa's drug-addled girlfriend manages to get the drop on them, shooting them both with an automatic weapon. Brian sneaks around and holds her at gunpoint, as she drops her gun and fakes surrender looking all lost and innocent. When Brian hesitates to kill her, she unveils a hidden sidearm and attacks him with it. Brian is able to plug her with a couple of rounds, one through the forehead, and then confronts Playa. In the shootout between them, Playa manages to get the upper hand and is about to shoot Brian in the neck again, but Detective Vassel shoots Playa, allowing Brian to finish him off by strangling him with his bare hands.

Brian and Detective Vassel fall to the floor and look up at the ceiling and the huge Christmas bauble decorations hanging down from above while they both bleed out dying. Brian sees reflections of his memories of his time with Taylor and hallucinates an alternate future, where he and Taylor are both still alive. Brian experiences visions of Taylor graduating from college and giving Brian a grandson who they bond together with. Saya opens a letter that Brian wrote to her before he went on his Christmas Eve rampage, where he apologises for how cold he had become in their marriage and thanks her for loving him. Brian further tells her that he knows no one can make Taylor's death right, but that he is going to die trying. Saya takes the letter to Taylor's grave, where Brian had earlier brought his previously unopened Christmas present from the year before (a toy train set) that he built and set up around his grave. 

'Silent Night' is a gritty, brutal revenge thriller completely devoid of any dialogue so allowing the Director, John Woo, to let the actions and mannerisms speaks louder than any words can. And on that level he largely succeeds, with any communication between all parties done by text messaging. What lets the film down though is the pacing from when Brian returns home at the end of January to sometime in December when we have an hour or so of our protagonist diving inside a bottle, to his epiphany, to his revenge fuelled training regime, to his intel gathering all intertwined with emotion writ large on the face of a dour looking Kinnaman, before the action kicks into gear finally in the final thirty minutes. And it's in the opening ten minutes and that closing half hour that the John Woo who we all know and love from his often stellar work in defining '80's and '90's action cinema, that represents a return to form for the now 77 year old Director. 

'Silent Night' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-