Summary
Last Christmas, David Harbour redefined Christmas cinema by injecting the holiday season with cheeky chaos in the action-comedyViolent Night. This year it will be action legend John Woo who aims to take this niche subgenre to another level with his long-awaited return to theaters in the upcoming R-rated action filmSilent Night.Having not had a film in theaters for two decades now, it is clear that the renowned choreographer/director is looking to make an explosive comeback by sticking to what he knows and does best.
After the flop of his last big Hollywood picture, 2003’s sci-fi actionerPaycheckstarring Ben Affleck, Woo embraced his Hong Kong roots and returned to Asian cinema with the two-part epicsRed CliffandThe Crossing. It was then announced in 2021 that Woo would be coming back to Hollywood with an experimental action film fromJohn Wickproducer Basil Iwanyk that took place at Christmas and featured no dialogue. The result is the merry mayhem that can be seen in Lionsgate’s new trailer release for the exhilaratingSilent Night.
What is ‘Silent Night’ About?
Oddly enough, the plot of the film is similar to that ofWoo’s 1997 absurdist masterpieceFace/Off, which opens with Nicolas Cage’s maniacal Castor Troy killing the son of John Travolta’s straight-laced Sean Archer.Silent Nightstars Joel Kinnaman as a grieving father whose son is killed in the crossfire of a gang war that happens outside his family’s home on Christmas Eve. Unable to speak due to his wounds, Kinnaman plots a vengeful massacre against those who took everything from him and will enact his plan on the anniversary of the tragedy. Unlike Travolta’s Archer however, he is not an FBI agent and will be taking the path of a vigilante who obsessively trains himself to complete the singular goal on his mind.The film also stars Scott Mescudi(also known as Kid Cudi) and Catalina Scandino Moreno (TV’sFrom).
When is ‘Silent Night’ in Theaters?
Lionsgate has scheduled a release date of December 1st, 2023 forSilent Night, which is just a day ahead of when Universal releasedViolent Nightlast year. It is clear that the studio is hoping to replicate the of success of the latter, which grossed a respectable $76 million on a $20 million budget. But whileViolent Nightleaned more into the comedic elements of its silly premise,Silent Nightseems to be taking a slightly more serious approach with its tone while still hanging onto the inherent craziness of Woo’s earlier work.
Can John Woo Return to Action Greatness?
Much like the trailer emphasizes, Woo truly isone of the best action directors of all time. He rose to prominence in the early 1990s with his Hong Kong-based productionsBullet in the HeadandHard-Boiled(both of which have the most jaw-dropping body counts in action cinema). His American debut was with 1993’s Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicleHard Target, which was critically and financially successful enough to earn him the directing job on the 1996 blockbusterBroken Arrow. The film itself is somewhat underwhelming given Woo’s body of work, but if it were not for this film then we likely never would have been treated with Woo’s greatest achievement.
The timelessness ofFace/Offhas prompted Paramount todevelop a sequel/remake with director Adam Wingard, who is a great filmmaker in his own right but not enough to warrant this soft-reboot of an untouchable action classic. Woo is able to take an inconceivably ludicrous script from writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary (who originally set the story 200 years in the future) and make it 100% believable. It is not realistic by any means, yet Woo’s mixture of absurd comedic edge and over-the-top drama create such a bizarre, unique world that the audience is too enamored by the grandeur to question its relentless insanity. This is due in large part to Travolta and theeternal Cage, whose career-high performanceas the zany terrorist Troy perfectly matches Woo’s equally crazy style in this lightning-in-a-bottle moment for action cinema.
Woo’s best American film was followedwith a string of disappointments inMission: Impossible II,Windtalkersand the aforementionedPaycheck, which effectively killed his credibility in Hollywood. Until now, as he hopes to have a bit of a renaissance withSilent Night. If the film can recapture any of the feverish energy fromFace/OfforHard-Boiled, then his prospects will be just fine. There were talks a couple of years ago that he was going toadapt the unpublished Stan Lee story “Monkey Master"and the success ofSilent Nightcould bring some momentum to that project and anything else the action auteur dreams of making in the twilight of his storied career.
