Silent Night (2023)
Frankincense and Murder
In five years, Christmas movies will officially have nothing to do with Christmas. It’s possible we’ll always have Hallmark movies, reruns of Peanuts specials, and Ralphie’s perennial quest for a Red Ryder BB gun. But if genre films are any kind of pop culture bellwether, you can already see the decline; from off-kilter classics like Gremlins (a monster movie) and Die Hard (an L.A.-set heist film) to recent examples like Fatman (in which a kid hires Walt Goggins to assassinate Mel Gibson’s world-weary St. Nick) and the 10 Krampus-themed horror flicks that have bloodied up screens since 2010.
In these cases, the carnage is at least set in motion by a holiday-themed catalyst: Kingston Falls would have been just fine if not for an ill-conceived Christmas gift, and the coming of the Krampus could be seen as an antidote to feel-good familial hypocrisy. John Woo’s latest film turns a very sharp corner, pushing Christmas movies down a trash-strewn alley of busted street lamps and hopelessness from which they might never return.
Despite my queasiness at the way in which Silent Night wears “The Season” as a skin suit, i can’t be mad at this nasty, hard-charging mid-budget masterpiece.
Joel Kinnaman plays Brian Godlock, an electrical worker and devoted dad whose son is killed by a stray bullet on Christmas Eve. The film opens with Brian, spattered in blood, pursuing two cars full of gang bangers through the streets of Las Palomas. He’s armed only with an ugly Christmas sweater, a sleigh bell necklace, and unreasoning, murderous rage. His prey, on the other hand, are using automatic weapons to air each other out at close range. So it’s no surprise when our hero finds himself shot in the gut and the throat by a shaved-headed, tatted-up hulk named Playa (Harold Torres).
It’s a classic revenge-flick setup. Like Emperor Palpatine, Brian somehow survives and decides to become a low-rent version of The Punisher (unlike Frank Castle, he has no military background on which to draw; he learns how to stab people by watching YouTube). Brian marks the following December 24th on a calendar with “KILL THEM ALL!”, and spends the next year shedding all his fear, his fat, and his beleaguered, grieving wife, Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno).
If you’re not yet aware, Woo and screenwriter Robert Archer Lynn have a neat trick up their sleeves that I’m sure they hope will set their movie apart from hundreds more (including Woo’s own Face/Off from 1997—another hail-of-bullets fantasy that opens with a kid dying in his father’s arms). True to its name, there is no dialogue in Silent Night. From start to finish, the only spoken words come from diegetic sources like police scanners, the occasional radio broadcast, and some indeterminate screaming as Playa’s goons meet their ends.
I credit the filmmakers for fully committing to the bit. This isn’t a Silent Bob situation where, at the end, Brian finally makes some scratchy, furrowed-brow declaration about justice or family; Kinnaman uses every other tool in his kit to show us Godlock’s inner struggle between the futility of his mission and the preternatural drive to carry it out–all without so much as a syllable.
The execution is solid, but not flawless. You can rationalize scenes like the one in which Brian and Saya hold each other tearfully and wordlessly on a couch, just before she walks out on him: we’re likely seeing the aftermath of a Marriage Story-style explosion (albeit one-sided), happening upon the couple when there’s nothing left to say. At other times, Woo and Lynn strain credulity, as when, during the climactic raid on Playa’s compound, Brian comes face to face with the detective (Scott Mescudi) to whom he’s been feeding clues.** I didn’t expect banter on the level of Bruce Willis and Reginald VelJohnson, but at the very least a “Freeze!” would’ve been in order.
(I suppose I should be grateful to have been spared that awkward action movie cliche where the good guys talk to themselves like crazy people, all so the filmmakers can avoid using equally awkward voiceover to convey their inner monologue.)
These cracks are minor, and fairly well painted over by a rare take on the urban vigilante. At no point in Silent Night does Brian actually become a Punisher-level threat to his enemies. Despite months of physical exercise, weapons training, and putting a newly armored 2016 Mustang through a low-rent version of “car chase school”, he’s still a screw-up from beginning to end. This can partly be blamed on vengeance-fueled tunnel vision, and partly on the fact that he’s just a regular guy. All the knives, guns, and sleek black trench coats in the world are no match for streets-honed viciousness, and Brian regularly has his ass handed to him due to naked short-sightedness and clumsiness.*
What does any of this have to do with Christmas?
Exactly!
Aside from the cute title and the time of year in which it’s set, the only connection between Silent Night’s story and the actual holiday is (loosely) aesthetic. It’s Los Angeles, after all, so the only snow to be found is packed into taped-up plastic bricks. Playa dances around the climax in a flowing Santa coat. Brian imagines his son inside the warm glow of a tree ornament. But you’ll find nary a stitch of messaging or even Christmas accouterments tied into the main plot, themes, or kills. It’s like those direct-to-video Hellraiser movies from the early 2000s, where Dimension Films dropped Pinhead into generic horror scripts in order to jury-rig sellable product.
John Woo has directed a mostly excellent thriller, featuring an actor who embodies the sadness, anger, and bewilderment of our times (along with an occasional sprinkling of hope). But it’s barely an incidental holiday movie, and far from the kind of off-beat genre classic you might put on in December. This is more of a “Christmas in July” movie.
*Pay attention to the scene where Brian sends a Christmas card to police headquarters. It’s packaged with a thumb drive, which our detective immediately inserts into his work laptop. I’ve sat through enough mandatory-training videos on cyber safety to know that neither Woo nor Lynn have done the same. Take note, Lionsgate corporate.
**As does his unwitting detective friend who, unfortunately, toward the end, fractures the picture's reality by becoming a bit too John Wick for my liking.
