John Woo puts the Silent in Silent Night.
With Silent Night, director John Woo is clearly aiming to deliver a visceral, tightly wound revenge thriller that strips away dialogue in favour of an attempt at pure cinematic storytelling. But if that’s the aim, I think his scope is off.
Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) is an electrician living a happy life in the town of Las Palomas, Texas, with his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and son Taylor. On Christmas Eve (admittedly the only Christmassy connection the film attempts), the family are playing with a new bicycle on their front lawn when they are caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting during a gang war, resulting in Taylor’s death. In his immediate grief, Brian attempts to chase down the gangsters, but the leader, Playa (Harrold Torres), shoots him in the throat and leaves him for dead. Brian survives, but his vocal cords are severely damaged, leaving him mute – Silent Night, get it? – and as Brian and Saya grieve their loss, Brian grows increasingly cold and distant, focused only on his pursuit of revenge for Taylor.
Joel Kinnaman is perfectly serviceable as Brian, playing a role so desperately generic it could have been performed by almost anyone. Without dialogue to lean on, his performance is adequate, conveying the necessary grief, rage, and determination, but never quite rising above the limitations of the character as written. The near total absence of dialogue is a narrative trick that seems clever at first but quickly wears thin and by the end has become laughably contrived.
John Woo’s return to American action movies after a twenty year absence, is somewhat anticlimactic in a film that’s more enamoured of its central contrivance than it is with showcasing Woo’s signature style. Everything here feels more than a little tired and played out. The car chases, shoot outs, even the introspective flashbacks, are all either overblown or underwhelming, creating a lack of balance that destabilises the film almost from the get-go. It doesn’t even find a place for a slow-motion dove release scene.
The film attempts to use a haunting score to create emotional weight, but often leans too heavily on it in the absence of more meaningful character development. The music, while effective at times, feels like it’s compensating for the lack of depth elsewhere, providing a manufactured sense of tension and catharsis. The cinematography, though visually striking, struggles to elevate the film beyond its generic urban grit, leaving it all feeling somewhat hollow.
While Silent Night leans heavily on its intriguing premise, it ultimately falls flat in execution. The lack of dialogue quickly becomes more of a gimmick than a meaningful storytelling device, leaving characters and subplots frustratingly underdeveloped. The focus on Brian’s perspective is so singular that it fails to offer any depth to the antagonist, reducing Playa to a one-dimensional stereotype rather than a compelling counterbalance to Brian’s journey.
Silent Night is a disappointing, albeit watchable, revenge thriller, desperately uninventive despite its unique set-up. Its reliance on visual storytelling would be admirable were the visual storytelling up to the job but instead it all feels like the near total absence of dialogue was more a cynical marketing ploy with an eye on maximising foreign sales distribution that any artistic conceit. For fans of John Woo’s earlier, more dynamic work, this film can only serve as a reminder of what once was rather than a reassuring restatement of Woo’s lasting prowess in the action genre.
