Hated this film, most tedious action movie ever. It oversells the opening credits death of his son. While I understand it's the crux of the motivation, we get 30 minutes of his suffering before he decides to do a thing. Feels emotionally manipulative, wringing every last drop of milk from the tragedy to the point where it can't be called a fun action film in the least. The entire film is dialogue free, which works for him since he loses his voice, but becomes a big, dumb gimmick as every character in the film is given an excuse not to speak. One is gagged, one cries and texts the entire film, one is simply quiet and stoic and the rest grunt and groan to fill the gaping void. So finally, after a long cliched montage of him body building and gun training (and why he needs to be extra ripped I don't understand, but I'll buy it). He has a year to plan the perfect revenge and what does he do? Drives up, makes a lot of noise, makes every mistake imaginable & is constantly getting beat up and luck saves him every single time. Bad guys aim for his bullet proof vest over and over again, they give him long cool looks instead of just shooting him as he loudly makes himself an eye sore in every situation, never using even the smallest amount of stealth. He decides not to shoot a woman who just unambiguously just shot at him to kill him, which obviously doesn't go well for him. He tells the bad guys he's coming for him and is surprised that they best him. The lead bad guy decides to dance with his girl for like 10 minutes in slow motion as he is killing all his guys in what is possibly the most over decorated art direction ever in a movie... his lair looks like a groovy Los Angeles art installation or something meow wolf would dream up, hardly a gang member's decorating style. He sees his son in things and plays with his toys over and over stopping the action in its tracks. And finally, why are all the gang members cliches from 1990's movies? Why are they squatting and squaring off in abandoned ruins of buildings? Don't they have anywhere better to be? This movie was a boring, ridiculous, mess. John Woo tried his best to make it interesting visually, but the hyper style that worked in films like Face/Off never stops and makes it feel even more dramatically over the top.
Review of Silent Night
