Violent Night. (15.)
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady, Cam Gigandet and Beverly D'Angelo. In cinemas. 112 mins.
Violent night, holy night, all is crass, all is dark. For eleven months of the year, that’s the title of a straightastreaming action movie but at this most wonderful time of the year, it becomes something rather smart and enticing. Just like the music biz, in the movies one Christmas hit and you're made for life. Elf, Wonderful Life, Muppet's Christmas Carol, etc are hardy perennials, steady and reliable earning streams for their respective Noddies and Mariahs. With its Father-Christmas-as-an-action-hero set-up, Violent Night's bid to join them is both calculated and demented.
There is a surface ingenuity to its mix of three Christmas classics: Bad Santa, Die Hard and Home Alone. Harbour is a disillusioned, cantankerous, potty-mouthed, drunk Claus, who finds himself playing John McClane in a hostage situation after an obscenely rich family discover that their holiday catering staff are actually a ruthless criminal gang. Santa starts to fight back using MacCauley Culkin style improvised, slapstick violence.
This a film where you will wish that Santa had the common decency to carry a gun. Instead, the action is a series of impalements and dismemberings. That title isn’t just a cheeky quip: the film really goes all in trying to live up to that title. Probably there are many Christmas films that make the wince, but not usually because someone’s jaw has been impaled on a sharp nail.
Violent Night is junky and reductive but it is effective. The performances are strong, there are some funny lines and the action is often gruesomely inventive. A Santa action movie is such a potent idea that audiences will want to go along with it, even if the movie is only halfway decent. As long as audiences aren’t put off by the violence, and the one I saw it with certainly weren’t, this could be a hit.
What turned me off the film was that the film delivers its gore and decapitations with all the standard Christmas mush. Santa is sickened by the joyless materialism of the holidays but gets his spirit back because there is one little girl Trudy (Brady) who truly believes in him. Over the film Trudy goes from innocent child to killing machine without, apparently, losing her sweet nature and Santa’s magic power are only as strong as people’s belief in him. So it's the standard American paean to the glories of blind faith and brutal self-sufficiency. Sentimentality and sadism are a repellent mix and any child that enjoys this deserves to be put on the naughty list for eternity.
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady, Cam Gigandet and Beverly D'Angelo. In cinemas. 112 mins.
Violent night, holy night, all is crass, all is dark. For eleven months of the year, that’s the title of a straightastreaming action movie but at this most wonderful time of the year, it becomes something rather smart and enticing. Just like the music biz, in the movies one Christmas hit and you're made for life. Elf, Wonderful Life, Muppet's Christmas Carol, etc are hardy perennials, steady and reliable earning streams for their respective Noddies and Mariahs. With its Father-Christmas-as-an-action-hero set-up, Violent Night's bid to join them is both calculated and demented.
There is a surface ingenuity to its mix of three Christmas classics: Bad Santa, Die Hard and Home Alone. Harbour is a disillusioned, cantankerous, potty-mouthed, drunk Claus, who finds himself playing John McClane in a hostage situation after an obscenely rich family discover that their holiday catering staff are actually a ruthless criminal gang. Santa starts to fight back using MacCauley Culkin style improvised, slapstick violence.
This a film where you will wish that Santa had the common decency to carry a gun. Instead, the action is a series of impalements and dismemberings. That title isn’t just a cheeky quip: the film really goes all in trying to live up to that title. Probably there are many Christmas films that make the wince, but not usually because someone’s jaw has been impaled on a sharp nail.
Violent Night is junky and reductive but it is effective. The performances are strong, there are some funny lines and the action is often gruesomely inventive. A Santa action movie is such a potent idea that audiences will want to go along with it, even if the movie is only halfway decent. As long as audiences aren’t put off by the violence, and the one I saw it with certainly weren’t, this could be a hit.
What turned me off the film was that the film delivers its gore and decapitations with all the standard Christmas mush. Santa is sickened by the joyless materialism of the holidays but gets his spirit back because there is one little girl Trudy (Brady) who truly believes in him. Over the film Trudy goes from innocent child to killing machine without, apparently, losing her sweet nature and Santa’s magic power are only as strong as people’s belief in him. So it's the standard American paean to the glories of blind faith and brutal self-sufficiency. Sentimentality and sadism are a repellent mix and any child that enjoys this deserves to be put on the naughty list for eternity.
