O Silêncio da Vingança

Silent Night is a new action film directed by John Woo, director of Broken Arrow and Face/Off.

When a father (Joel Kinnaman) and his son accidentally become victims of a criminal gang shooting on Christmas Eve, the son is affected. The father goes after the criminals, but is also shot and his vocal cords are activated.

He can no longer talk, but he wants revenge. So he begins to train himself to take impossible Christmas revenge on the gang members who took his son and his voice away.

With Silent Night, John Woo makes a directorial comeback after 20 years, because he has no longer controlled American action films since his 2003 film Paycheck. John Woo has often made his private action films unique in special ways. He now tries to do the same again by using almost no real dialogue in this film, apart from some background dialogue from music and news radio.

Joel Kinnaman has to work more with facial expressions and body postures to act. He does this well, but if there had been a little more dialogue at the beginning of the film, the story could have been a bit clearer. Due to the lack of speech, the film can sometimes remain unclear. Catalina Sandino Moreno plays his wife and mother of the child who died. She knows how to portray a good, supporting role. Unfortunately, she fades into the background halfway through the film, during the father's revenge campaign. Kid Cudi plays a cop in the film who tries to investigate the attack on the father and son, but he still comes across as more in another film. If they had left his character out of the movie, the movie could have been a bit shorter and clearer.

The story remains a standard revenge action film, in which characters, for personal reasons, want to take revenge on people who have harmed or taken something away from them. This film is somewhat reminiscent of John Wick's Deadpool, only with less humor or similar action.

There are entertaining action scenes in this film, but unfortunately they are not that special and not at all for a Jon Woo action comeback. The action scenes do have some creative moments with good visual effects. Unfortunately, not all of the effects even look significant. Some explosions seem less realistic. The blood that characters get during the action scenes also sometimes looks more like fake CGI blood than it looks real.

I'm not sure if the reviewers watched the same movie as me. I found this film packed with cool stunts and action sequences. I got both John Wick and The Raid vibes while watching it. Some scenes even reminded me of something out of GTA V.

Even though there wasn't much plot in the movie and no dialogues whatsoever, I think the film is carried forward by Joel Kinnaman's excellent acting. Not many big action stars could pull off the same.

All in all, I found it an entertaining and excellent action film. Just switch of your brain and enjoy it. I'm probably going to watch it again. I'll rate it 8/10.

Director John Woo got world famous for his fabulous action visuals during the nineties. This picture still looks the part, but that is about the only positive I can find...

The bad: the action only starts after 50 minutes. Besides an action packed opening scene of a few minutes no thrilling action to be seen during the first 50 minutes.

Is the action any good then? Well yes and no. As I said before, the action looks great visually, but the action choreography is a bit lame, because gangsters get shot and stabbed and just keep on figthing as if nothing has even touched them. Pretty lame. Credibility near zero.

More bad: the leading actor hasnt got any charisma. He looks like a dork. And although there is one big, bad crime guy who was supposed to be the ultimate evil, but he wasnt impressing me either.

I had hoped for a thrilling action packed gangster movie, but it was quite a bit of a dread to watch though...

This is not up to John Woo's talent. I found the material entirely like a one-trick pony. All rage, and sadness, verging on insanity, without any real character development, or pathos. There is nothing in the lead character's story that allows the audience to sympathize with him, other than the loss of his son. There are no positive events to draw us into the story. Instead, we are faced with an ever-increasing level of horror, rage, and madness. Woo has been known to give violence an almost ballet type of choreography (Bullet time slow motion) but that is not what we are seeing here. With the rage of the main character, we are faced with depression, rage, and madness which causes an ever-increasing degree of violence that continues to the very end of the film. This film should have ratings of extreme violence attached. While I watched the entire film I was left with a deep feeling of disatisfaction when it was over. It almost feels like the film was only part of a story.

John Woo is a filmmaker I admittedly haven't seen a tonne of work from, but he undeniably has a vision for action sequences. That is what he is known for and he has stuck to that throughout most of his career in the business. Face/Off and Hard Boiled are awesome action films, so if I ever get the chance, I'll check out his latest. Well, Silent Night is his latest American effort and I must say, he hasn't lost his touch with action. With that said though, it was just okay overall. It has a lot of promise and some great ideas, but something bogged it down for me. Here are my thoughts.

After a gang accidentally kills the son of a couple just trying to live a happy life, the husband, Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) decides to go after them. He ends up shot in the neck, preventing him from ever speaking a word again. His mission then becomes to train his body to take on this gang and kill them all. The unique aspect of this film is the fact that it is told entirely without dialogue. Not a single one of the characters speaks one word. I enjoyed that aspect, but I do wish it was utilized more than just having nobody speak. Nothing was interesting past the point of just not having him talk. It was clear that Woo just wanted to focus on the action and that was worth the price of admission.

There wasn't a lot of originality in terms of the action set pieces, but it was all very well-choreographed. From a standout fight that takes place in a house, to a great stairwell scene, the action held my attention. With that said, the good aspects of this film are bogged down by the sappy nature of the backstory. The way his past with his child is presented is kind of cheesy at first and there is a specific moment towards the end of the film that almost made me chuckle when it was clear the film was trying to be very emotional. The schmaltz of it all overtook the film and ruined a few moments.

Joel Kinnaman is an actor I like very much and his performance here is quite solid, but I'm not sure he was given enough to do, other than either be incredibly angry or sad. It's a very thin story and screenplay and the final product shows that. Still, if you enjoy action, there is enough here to satisfy viewers. The absent dialogue is a great idea, but this type of film needed some in my opinion. Silent Night is a little too cheesy at times, but I still think it's worth a watch if you are already interested. Now playing in theatres, there are worse options to watch than this one.