Silent Night
by George Wolf
December is a busy month, so Brian (Joel Kinnaman) has some helpful reminders written on his wall calendar.
“Pick up Mom from the airport?”
“Buy a ham?”
No, no, Brian is thinking bigger this year, especially for his Christmas Eve party plans.
“Kill them all!”
And, if things go really well, “start a gang war?” Yes, he really writes that down.
A year ago, Brian’s son was killed by a stray bullet from a gangland shootout in suburban Texas. Brian himself was shot in the throat during the mayhem, and he’s spent all his silent days and nights since then ignoring his wife (Catalina Sandino Moreno, doing what she can with a thankless role) and planning some very bad tidings of revenge.
Silent Night is director John Woo’s first American film in 20 years, but his considerable skill with an action sequence is never enough to elevate the film beyond a misguided fantasy of bloodlust and wall-building.
And even then, the blood-spilling combat doesn’t begin until nearly halfway in, as we wade through 50 tedious minutes of dialog-free montages with Brian target shooting, reinforcing his ride and making anguished faces.
Despite the title, the Christmas setting feels tacked-on for marketing purposes, becoming the only theme in Robert Archer Lynn’s script that’s soft-pedaled. The “silent” gimmick becomes contrived pretty quickly, there are numerous gaps in logic and you wonder why everyone involved here was so comfortable with an angry, self-righteous white man executing countless Mexicans.
Sure, Brian tips off an African-American cop (Scott Mescudi) about his mission to do what the law won’t, but the film is never hazy about what heroes and villains look like.
Those hand-written calendar notes teased the possibility for some humorous lunacy that is completely ignored, as the only thing over-the-top here is the utter seriousness of tone. Could Nic Cage and a face-off machine have saved this holiday turkey? Tough call. Even Woo’s battle sequences seem uninspired and repetitive, and the most memorable piece of the action in Silent Night becomes how much louder its speaking.
