Silent Night

In the 20 years since his last Hollywood film, John Woo has apparently become a David Ayer disciple.

Such adoration for ham-fisted storytelling and poorly conceived action sequences permeates Silent Night, a 12-year-old's idea of a vigilante movie with a gimmick that gets old extremely fast.

Written by Robert Archer Lynn, who may indeed by a preteen, the movie follows Texas contractor Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman), who — because we’re somehow still making "white guy slaughters minorities" movies in 2023 where the gringo is the hero — plots revenge on the Mexican gangsters who accidentally murdered his young son, setting his sights on a Christmas Eve showdown.

His immediate attempt at payback, however, leaves Brian mute, so Lynn and Woo erroneously think it’s a good idea to render the entire film dialogue-free — a choice that seems destined to inspire frustrated viewers to shout at the screen and provide some semblance of entertainment that the film itself is incapable of delivering.

The wordless approach might have worked out fine if the filmmakers didn’t waste so much time getting to the brand of jaw-dropping action for which Woo was once known. But in a misguided attempt to infuse Brian’s mission with intense emotional investment, we’re forced to endure a good half hour wallowing in his grief when a handful of minutes will suffice.

The typically reliable Kinneman quickly proves that he’s not the man for this challenging assignment, yet it’s possible that not even a Michael Shannon type could make pantomime marital discord with Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) or workouts and weapons stockpiling engaging. Woo handled the grief of child loss far better in Face/Off, and without conversations or other insights into Brian’s life, the motivation for his extremely dangerous mission simply isn’t convincing.

This flimsy set-up and overlong down-time could easily have been forgiven if it was mere soapy preamble to some classic Woo set pieces. But other than one memorable car crash early on and a nifty drone-aided shot in a stairwell during the second-rate video game finale, minimal thought it put into the action and there’s absolutely nothing to distinguish the visuals as distinctly Woo’s. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for his trademark pigeons, either.)

Embarrassingly cliché portrayals of Hispanic culture and a dumb subplot where Brian blames Det. Vassell (Scott Mescudi, Don’t Look Up) for not cleaning up the streets further hamper Silent Night, which seals its incompetence by closing with a borderline illegible handwritten letter that attempts to offer some sort of closure. Caring what it says, however, would be a Festivus miracle.

Grade: D-plus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Lionsgate)