Remember John Woo? Well, he’s back. I’m interested in “Silent Night.” Any action movie that tries to take a different approach to the genre has my attention, and this one certainly does.
Woo’s latest has now been given a December 1st release date in the United States, via Lionsgate. The film also released its first image, which can be seen above.
“Silent Night” is a film with no dialogue. Rather, its story is told visually with music accompanying the drama. Marco Beltrami composed the score, which drives the movie and has been described by Woo as almost like an action musical.
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.
“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.
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 was, once, one of the best and most successful action directors out there, he made a name for himself with such Hong Kong 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.”