Remember John Woo? Well, he’s back.
Principal photography on Woo’s “Silent Night” wrapped in May of 2022 in Mexico City. The film is the first U.S. movie directed by the iconic Hong King filmmaker in almost 20 years.
Woo’s last American film was 2003’s terrible Ben Affleck action flick “Paycheck.” He swore off Hollywood after that one, but he’s back now with a film that sounds absolutely intriguing, at least on-paper.
Woo tells Vulture that “Silent Night”, which might be released in the fall, is a film with no dialogue. Rather, its story is told visually with music accompanying the drama:
It allowed me to use visuals to tell the story, to tell how the character feels. We are using music instead of language. And the movie is all about sight and sound. The budget was a little tight, and the schedule was tight, but it made me change my working style. Usually, for a big movie, a studio movie, we shoot a lot of coverage, then leave it to the cutting room. But in this movie, I tried to combine things without doing any coverage shots. I had to force myself to use a new kind of technique. Some scenes were about two or three pages, but I did it all in one shot.
Marco Beltrami composed the score of “Silent Night.” It’s also being produced by Erica Lee who had confirmed to Collider, this past March, that the movie featured no dialogue:
"It really has no dialogue. It was another spec script that I was given and read, and I was like, "This is either going to be a genius move or a disaster, there's no in between." It's execution dependent for sure. I mean, John Woo kills it. Joel Kinnaman is the star and really delivers. I mean, there's some ambient noise and background and chatter like radio and stuff like that. But, yeah, it's awesome. I can't wait for you to see it."
Woo was, once, one of the best and most successful action directors out there, he made a name for himself with such classics as “The Killer,” “Hard Boiled” and “A Better Tomorrow.”
Then Hollywood came calling in the early ‘90s and the results were very mixed, his best one was 1997’s “Face/Off,” but he also had plenty of duds including “Mission: Impossible II,” “Hard Target,” “Windtalkers,” and “Paycheck.”
“Silent Night” stars Joel Kinnaman as a father on a mission to avenge his young son who was tragically caught in the crossfire of gang violence on Christmas Eve. Shot and nearly killed while in pursuit of the murderers, Godlock vows to avenge his son by any means necessary.
Woo has been mostly dabbling in Asian cinema these last twenty years, quite successfully, might I add — 2008’s “Red Cliff” is well worth a look.