Highlights
- Action legend John Woo aims to make an explosive comeback with the upcoming R-rated action film Silent Night, sticking to what he knows and does best.
- Silent Night stars Joel Kinnaman as a grieving father seeking revenge on those who killed his son in a gang war on Christmas Eve.
- Lionsgate has scheduled a release date of December 1st, 2023 for Silent Night, hoping to replicate the success of last year's Violent Night while taking a more serious tone.
Last Christmas, David Harbour redefined Christmas cinema by injecting the holiday season with cheeky chaos in the action-comedy Violent 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 film Silent 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 actioner Paycheck starring Ben Affleck, Woo embraced his Hong Kong roots and returned to Asian cinema with the two-part epics Red Cliff and The Crossing. It was then announced in 2021 that Woo would be coming back to Hollywood with an experimental action film from John Wick producer 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 exhilarating Silent Night.
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What is 'Silent Night' About?
Oddly enough, the plot of the film is similar to that of Woo's 1997 absurdist masterpiece Face/Off, which opens with Nicolas Cage's maniacal Castor Troy killing the son of John Travolta's straight-laced Sean Archer. Silent Night stars 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's From).
When is 'Silent Night' in Theaters?
Lionsgate has scheduled a release date of December 1st, 2023 for Silent Night, which is just a day ahead of when Universal released Violent Night last 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 while Violent Night leaned more into the comedic elements of its silly premise, Silent Night seems 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 is one of the best action directors of all time. He rose to prominence in the early 1990s with his Hong Kong-based productions Bullet in the Head and Hard-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 vehicle Hard Target, which was critically and financially successful enough to earn him the directing job on the 1996 blockbuster Broken 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 of Face/Off has prompted Paramount to develop 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 the eternal Cage, whose career-high performance as 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 followed with a string of disappointments in Mission: Impossible II, Windtalkers and the aforementioned Paycheck, which effectively killed his credibility in Hollywood. Until now, as he hopes to have a bit of a renaissance with Silent Night. If the film can recapture any of the feverish energy from Face/Off or Hard-Boiled, then his prospects will be just fine. There were talks a couple of years ago that he was going to adapt the unpublished Stan Lee story "Monkey Master" and the success of Silent Night could bring some momentum to that project and anything else the action auteur dreams of making in the twilight of his storied career.