“Silent Night” (2023) Movie Review by Rafy Mediavilla (@Rmediavilla) #SilentNightMovie
A gritty revenge tale of a tormented father who witnesses his young son die when caught in a gang’s crossfire on Christmas Eve. While recovering from a wound that costs him his voice, he makes vengeance his life’s mission and embarks on a punishing training regimen in order to avenge his son’s death.
I have to be honest and say that the one selling point for me to sit through this movie was that it was a John Woo movie taking into consideration that I was a huge fan of Face Off, Broken Arrow and of course Mission Impossible 2 so I knew that I was coming into an action-packed movie But what I ultimately saw it was something that I already wasn’t expecting in a good way honestly in a good way. With this in mind, let’s talk about it.
Story-wise, and spoilers ahead it’s going to be difficult for me to explain this movie without spoilers but this is in essence is a mute movie there are no spoken words throughout the film. And what I think I love about the story the most is the fact that the whole movie relies on John Woo’s direction, and Joel Kinnaman’s performance, which I will dive into later. But in essence, the premises of the story is a revenge-driven one, Where the main character has the ability to speak because of gunshot wounds and he goes all throughout the story and how it unfolds by just showing up beating people up and obviously we see the pain and agony and the rage in his face.
Performance-wise, this is all Joel Kinnaman and John Woo’s bouncing off each other to tell the story. I absolutely feel as if this is a passion project for director John Woo and he absolutely wanted Joel Kinnaman to be in his movie, we also really see how great of an actor Joel Kinnaman is as we see constant shots of him just being all beat up being in pain wanting to get revenge on this people that murder his son being in agony but at the same time also being in Rage and and one thing to in some way get his life back even though he cannot turn back time to fix whatever happened and throughout the film between the fight scenes and the action scenes we see it we see the emotions in his face and I think that he absolutely killed it with her performance.
Regarding, John Woo style of filmmaking, everything that makes a John Woo film all the elements that they find his career are fully present in the story and the movie you can see the amazing action scenes the choreographies the practical effects. All are shown and immerse you in the story I get you to the point that you cannot just miss a moment of the action because of how awesome everything plays out. so if you’re at John will find you’re going to enjoy this movie from start to finish without a doubt.
In the end, Silent Night caters to a John Woo type of audience it’s a family-driven action movie with a holiday spirit sprinkled in it that ultimately gets a job done at making a fun entertaining time of the theaters for fans of the mid-90s and late 90s action movie flicks. Meaning that if this is something that is right up your alley something that you want to see in theaters this is something that is going to be a must-watch for you as much as it was for me.
