Silent Night Review

 

Silent Night is an action-thriller movie. It's produced by Thunder Road Films, Capstone Studios, and A Better Tomorrow Films and distributed by Lionsgate. Silent Night is written by Robert Archer Lynn and directed by John Woo.

The story is on Christmas Eve, John Godluck was just enjoying a wonderful Christmas season with his family. Then things all changed when he gets injured to the point of being unable to speak and his family was killed. Now, John's on the warpath and he won't stop until everyone responsible has payed for what they did.

Initial Reaction

Now I was excited for this movie the moment I saw the trailer on Twitter/X. It looked like it was gonna be a very fun action revenge flick. So excited, that I decided to finally watch some John Woo movies. More specifically he's big four winning streak films, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Bullet in the Head, and Hard Boiled.

Cons

I've got nothing, just scroll down.

Middle Ground

Ultimately, the big mix bag for the movie was the story. Now I had no issue with the whole revenge aspect. Sure, we've seen the whole father or other family member get revenge for the big tragedy. That part I found fine. But the thing that could've been more polished was the whole silence gimmick. If they wanted to keep the dialogueless throughout, okay, I'll appalled them for that. But what they could've done is gone deeper with the other characters. We barely get to know anything about the gang members or the cop that later appears. So if anything, the story could've stayed the same, but definitely needed to be just a bit longer.

Pros

Now to tell you about what was right about Silent Night. One being Joel Kinnaman's performance. Now I know he's a talented actor, but I was still impressed with how he was able to do so much without saying anything. Sure we hear him, but it's mainly just grunts and stuff, and even then he manages not to screw up the fact his character suffered a serious neck injury. Cause when we do hear those grunts, he also makes them sound very rough sounding. Then there's the one of two things that help safe this movie, one of those being the action. It's bloody fun. Gun fire, hand-to-hand fights, a spectacular car chase, and a pretty awesome staircase shootout. Just great action all around. Which brings me to John Woo's directing. Even though the story is decent, you can still expect John Woo to craft a beautifully done movie. From beginning to end, the movie looks great.

Silent Night is definitely not John Woo's strongest movie, but by the end I still had some fun with the overall product.

My final rating is, Okay.

That wraps everything up. Come back on Thursday, Dec 7th, for my Classic Film Night review of, Miracle on 34th Street. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.