Joel Kinnaman in John Woo’s Revenge Thriller – The Hollywood Reporter

Joel Kinnaman in “Silent Night.”

Carlos Latapi/Focus Features

When it comes to action movies, the dialogue is extremely over-the-top. That’s one of the main points of the new film about a father who goes into full guard mode to avenge the death of his young son at the hands of gang violence. Of course, it helps a lot that the movie in question was directed by John Woo. He makes a stunning return to Hollywood 20 years after the release of his last American film, a mediocre 2003 film. SalaryThe seasoned business manager delivers the goods in full A quiet night.

The title coyly refers to the opening scene set on Christmas Eve and the film’s lack of almost any dialogue, a bold choice that pays off in full. (As much as I adore John Wick In the movies, they would lose a lot of their bloated running time if the villains stopped You talk.) We first see the protagonist, Brian, played by Joel Kinnaman, running frantically through the backstreets, a crazy expression on his face and wearing a ridiculous sweater of the kind that parents have to wear during the holidays. Eventually, he managed to catch up to cars full of heavily armed gang members whom he was desperately pursuing, only to be cornered and shot in the throat by one of them.

We eventually learn the reason for the frantic chase – that he was enjoying a blissful moment in his front yard with his wife (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and young son when the latter was killed by stray gunfire as a result of an exchange of gunfire between two speeding people. Passing vehicles. After his ill-fated attempt to catch his son’s killers, Brian wakes up in a hospital and eventually makes a full recovery but has lost the ability to speak. A sympathetic detective (Scott Mescudi, known as Kid Cudi) gives him his card, but it’s already clear that justice is unlikely to be served.

Except as Brian, who, much to his wife’s dismay, is slowly transforming himself from a loving family man into the kind of revenge-obsessed maniac who makes a note in his calendar titled “Kill Them All.” Like his contemporary Travis Bickle, he begins a regimen of intense physical conditioning, learning knife skills from online videos (an advantage Travis did not have in 1976) and undergoing firearms training at a shooting range. He also acquires a massive arsenal of weapons and a police radio to monitor law enforcement activity, and surreptitiously takes extensive photographs of gang members plastered on the wall of the local police station. After kidnapping someone to gain vital information, Brian leaves the tied-up thug on the detective’s doorstep as an early Christmas present, competing with greeting cards.

Needless to say, all the preparations culminate in a not-so-silent night of intense violence directed at the gang, especially their heavily tattooed leader Playa (Harold Torres, eerily menacing), who not surprisingly takes Brian’s efforts against him somewhat personally.

Action fans will appreciate Woo’s mastery, which is on full display here in a series of car chases, shootouts, and car chase/shootouts. Despite the clearly low budget, the action sequences are wonderfully orchestrated and shot, and include occasional doses of the director’s trademark slow motion. (None of his distinctive white doves appeared, but a bird did land on Brian’s hospital room window in a meaningful way.)

However, the highlight of the film is not one of the many lavishly staged gunfights, but rather a long, brutal fistfight between Brian and one of Playa’s henchmen that makes for a classic fight scene in a Hitchcock film. Torn curtain It looks like a schoolyard struggle.

However, what is even more impressive are the director’s brilliant visual transitions from flashbacks depicting Brian’s former cheerful life as a loving husband and father to his painful post-tragedy existence. Such moments profoundly convey the feeling that the past was just a dream and the present a living nightmare.

It’s to Woo’s and screenwriter Robert Lynn’s credit, as well as Kinnaman’s intense, powerful physical performance, that the film’s lack of dialogue proves not a gimmick but an asset. Norma Desmond would certainly have approved.