Silent Night Trailer is a Blood-Soaked Stocking Stuffer
For the second year in a row, a Christmas action movie is headed to theaters, as Lionsgate has released a trailer for Silent Night. The latest film from acclaimed action director John Woo – and his first American movie since 2003’s Paycheck – Silent Night is about a man who survives a gang shooting that kills his son but loses his voice from a throat wound and seeks revenge against the criminals responsible on Christmas Eve. Joel Kinnaman stars, with Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Mescudi, and Harold Torres in supporting roles. Silent Night will be released in theaters on December 1, 2023, and you can see the trailer below:
This movie is basically past third and headed home for me. I love Christmas, I love action, and I love when the twain meet. And based on the trailer, Silent Night looks terrific. The story is basic, aside from the hook of Kinnaman losing his voice, but that’s okay; sometimes, a simple premise is better, and the horror of losing a child to violent criminals resonates because we can all feel it, even if we don’t have kids. This is what makes the Punisher work so well. The movie hasn’t even come out yet, and you already want to see the grieving father shoot, cut, and neck-snap his way through every last one of these punks. I also like how the graphics on the text parts of the trailer are designed to look like a Christmas sweater; it not only sells the Christmas setting but Kinnaman as a regular guy, a dad who just wanted to spend Christmas with his family. I’m glad to see John Woo working with Hollywood again; sure, Paycheck was lousy, and Mission: Impossible 2 was silly, but Hard Target, Broken Arrow, and especially Face/Off were excellent, so I never bought into the idea that he can’t make good movies here. And Lionsgate is absolutely the right studio for him, one that will take chances on stuff the big studios either won’t touch or would micromanage into oblivion. (If not for them, John Wick wouldn’t exist.) It looks like my annual Christmas Movie Watch List is about to grow yet again.
