“Silent Night”

Movie Review by

Carol Schaye

    

Director: John Woo

Writer: Robert Archer Lynn

Stars: Joel Kinnaman, Kid Cudi, Harold Torres

Joel Kinnaman performs phenomenally in John Woo’s latest film, “Silent Night.” Kinnaman, a Swedish/ American actor, is in almost every scene in this violent, heartbreaking film directed by John Woo.   

After his young son is killed in a gang drive-by shooting (by mistake, his family is not gang members), Kinnaman’s character can not only not recover from the loss of his son; he becomes obsessed with revenge for his death. The story-line isn’t new, but the approach in both the acting and direction are. Left with an inability to speak after the assault, Kinnaman spends the entirety of the film in silence, at least verbal silence. Still, he has plenty to say with his internal life reflecting through his face (there are plenty of intense close-ups) and his frenetic body language. After a period of mourning, drinking a lot of alcohol, and having no relationship with his wife, he begins a plan to “Kill Them All.” By that, he means all the gang members who murdered his son. Isolated by choice, he drives his wife away (I’m uncertain what purpose she served, and the actress, Catalina Sandino Moreno, had nothing to do in this film). Perhaps Woo’s thought was to demonstrate how much Kinnaman was willing to lose to get revenge for his son, but since his wife’s character was not developed, we don’t feel any loss when she is gone. Kinnaman could have been a single father, and the story would have worked just as well. And works well it does.  When Kinnaman was interviewed about preparing for this part, he said he would go with the “Full-on method and not speak to anyone for three months.” I’m afraid I have to disagree that this is an accurate interpretation of Method Acting, but Kinnaman couldn’t keep silent anyway, so he began speaking fairly quickly off-camera. What he was able to deliver was excruciating emotional pain, which often does come from actual method acting work.

“You have to be true at the moment, or your eyes will tell that story, so it demanded me to do a lot more work before the takes. For each take, I was acting like a fucking psycho. Very many takes, I’d be just screaming and punching and kicking things, and just getting my inner life worked up to the level of desperation that he needed, and then trying to be quiet. I was always trying to blow a hurricane through a straw. That was the mental image I had of it. Yeah, so that part was challenging.” As Brian Godlock, Kinnaman spends his days bodybuilding, training in martial arts, and learning to drive the mandatory Mustang he soups up as bulletproof. The scenes where he is practicing driving the Mustang in possible various violent getaway scenarios are orchestrated like a modern dance. Shot dark, even during the daytime scenes, the cinematography adds to the relentless, almost oppressive grief that drives this father, who cannot accept the unnecessary murder of his beloved son. This father’s response was, for this writer, totally believable, a necessary point of view for a viewer to engage in the obsessive violence that occurs on behalf of his son.

A parent might turn their anger inward after such an event, but others might be set on revenge. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to accomplish what this fictional father does on behalf of his child, but they might try. I cannot recall seeing a film with violence choreographed as an art form so believably. Not gratuitous violence but retaliatory violence.

Director John Woo is no stranger to directing films with violence. “Silent Night” might be his crowning achievement (I hope there is more to come). Years ago, Director John Woo gave us “Face Off,” which now seems antiquated as the director strips off all unnecessary dialogue and asks his talented actors to deliver the pain of the unnecessary death of an innocent child in “Silent Night.” The dilapidated place the gang members call home, and the intravenous drug-using girlfriend the gang leader lives with are in stark contrast to the small middle-class home the Godlock family lives in while pursuing their American dream.  

KID Cudi

Amid this mayhem, there is a police detective (Played by Kid Cudi, Rapper, and Actor) who, without any dialogue, is trying to find a way to end this gang rule. Not surprisingly, he understands Godlock’s grief and joins him in his quest to end the gang violence he is up against. Kid Cudi has a face the camera loves, quite an asset for any actor. The guy can’t look bad on screen, but I digress. Without a word of dialogue, he becomes a noble police officer in an upside-down world, supporting a vigilante father.     

                  

                                                                    Harold Torres

Cast as the gang leader is the seasoned, respected, and well-trained actor (with a BFA in theatre), Harold Torres, who transforms himself into a genuine scary thug, who, during a dialogue-less dance scene with his drug-addicted girlfriend, does more to terrify us and create a psychopathic gangster than any gun, knife, or dialogue could have achieved. Woo has stripped his actors down to their bare-bones emotional realities, and it is a pleasure (although violent) to behold acting on such a grand level. Torres will appear next in director Martin Campbell’s movie “Memory” with Liam Neeson and Guy Pierce. He’s best known for starring in the Amazon series “Zero Zero Zero.”

 Director John Woo influenced Director Quentin Tarantino, amongst others, and changed the violent film

genre.The action scenes are directed much as a choreographer of a ballet or other dance form might proceed. These films do not glorify violence. They point out how we, the middle class, and our neighbors, the poorer lower financial class, war against each other while the super-rich laugh at our refusal to see what is before our eyes. Perhaps I give Woo more intention, but he did grow up extremely poor in a difficult situation, and it is difficult to shake those lessons of the “Man” pitting against each other so we won’t go after the real culprits, the super-rich.I recommend” Silent Night” for no other reason than to see the art of acting when an actor has no dialogue to say but can deliver that reality and heartbreaking agony from within their emotional experiences. Nothing is better than an actor who knows real life, pain, and genuine joy and can use those emotions to bring his/her character to the scene or stage.

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