Silent Night (2023) * *

Directed by:  John Woo

Starring:  Joel Kinnaman, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Harold Torres, Scott Mescudi

John Woo's Silent Night is John Wick without dialogue, which is both repetitive and distracting.  The John Wick series has exhausted all of the fresh ways you can witness someone being shot to death.  Like Wick, I ask myself how much spare ammo the hero has to carry and doesn't it get heavy to lug it around?  Even with a backpack? 

Silent Night has a heart at its core, and there is poignancy in the scenes in which grieving father Brian (Kinnaman) remembers his late son who was killed by a stray bullet during an L.A. gang gunfight.  He attempts to chase down the killers, but is soon shot in the throat and left for dead by gang leader Playa (Torres).   This explains why Brian cannot speak, but the rest of the movie follows suit.  The only character with any substantial dialogue is a radio DJ who helpfully announces what holiday is coming up to mark the passage of time.   The approach grows distracting and gimmicky.  Watching the movie contrive ways to avoid having its characters speak reminded me of the all the methods Sex and the City used to keep Mr. Big's real name a secret. 

Brian is inconsolable as he drinks his days away.  His wife Saya (Moreno) tries to move on and encourage her husband to do the same, but soon leaves him as his depression worsens.   The only way Brian can snap out of his funk is to plot his revenge, which plays like a Rocky montage in which he lifts weights, drives fast, and sharpens his aim at the gun range.   He plans December 24, the one-year anniversary of his son's death, to exact vengeance.   He writes on his calendar, "Kill them all,"  Brian attempts to seek the help of a detective (Mescudi), but finds he'd rather wipe out the gangs himself.  

There is no indication that Brian had military training or any previous firearms experience, but I suppose he idolized Call of Duty and John Wick because he kills nameless gang members with the best of them.   These are the only types of movies in which two or three bullets in the chest from point-blank range only serves to stun the baddies and force the hero to kick or punch the man he just shot with his hand cannon.  We've seen this movie before.   John Wick wanted to avenge his dog.  Brian wants to avenge his son.  This movie carries more emotional heft, but the results are the same.  No matter how creatively Woo tries to dress Silent Night up, it feels like same old, same old.