The return of John Woo -the director of a classic like Counteractwith John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, or the second of Mission Impossible– to Hollywood cinema, with silent revengeit is not in the best way we could hope for.
And it’s not that the action scenes, the choreography of the fights – because there are those who are in charge of diagramming where and how each blow is delivered – are wrong, but that everything that surrounds them is.
The film starts in a somewhat unusual, strange way. We see Brian (the Swede Joel Kinnamanof whom we remember his role in suicide squad, by David Ayer -the one from 2016-) running down the street. Lots of detail plan.
Is the bus 60 missing?
What happens to Brian is no joke. His little son Taylor, just 7 years old, is hit by a stray bullet in a gang war. And Brian goes after his attackers.
Almost no dialogue
We won’t know much from his mouth, because Silent Revenge has practically no dialogue (the first word is heard 10 minutes into the screening, and it is “Hello”). The dialogues, few, start at minute 19, after Brian is filled with bullets. It’s just a “Help me,” which Brian says from his throat pierced by a bullet, already recovering, to his wife, who responds, “How?”
No, it’s not that she didn’t understand him – well, maybe she did – but that she doesn’t know how to help her husband.
Things don’t get better in the empty nest, and Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno, the Colombian who once became an Oscar candidate for Maria Full of Grace) abandons Brian.
From there, or a little before, the father without a son, the one who is remembered in flashbacks playing with Taylor, the boy who had been given a bicycle with a red balloon that Christmas in which he died, plans revenge.
Not against Saya, no. Against the bad gangs.
It is not known how, because he is never seen working, but Brian must have a good financial fortune, because he buys weapons (many) and a beat-up car that becomes his strength. He trains his physique, learns how to stab someone. And he still doesn’t open his mouth.
John Woo didn’t patent it, but many will remember the scene near the end of Mission: Impossible 2in which Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) pulled a gun out of the sand, in a slowed-down shot.
Woo slows down the shots again, but the effect has lost its vigor.
Of course the police “investigated,” one way of saying, Taylor’s death, and there is a detective from the Gang Unit in Las Palomas. But Brian has everything figured out: on the following Christmas Eve, he will take justice into his own hands.
It is worth noting the poor aim that gang members have in general, and against Brian in particular.
There are crude car chases, knife fights and shootouts especially in the second half of the screening of Silent Night (in the original the silent one was not revenge, but the night).
Much depends on Kinnaman’s expressiveness to bear witness to pain, anger, obsession. The hook of not having dialogues, and that the words are heard from the radio or in some songs starts well, but when the shots sound thunderous and the blows come back dry, we will remember that in an action scene, not many times does one remember the words.
“Silent Revenge”
Action. United States / Mexico, 2023. Original title: “Silent Night”. 104′, SAM 16. Of: John Woo. Con: Joel Kinnaman, Catherine Sandino Brown, Harold Torres, Kid Cudi. Salas: Cinemark Palermo and Caballito, Cinépolis Pilar, Showcase Norcenter and Haedo.