2023-12-13 18:06:02
When a Hollywood studio boss once made the patronizing observation that John Woo was a good director of action scenes, Quentin Tarantino is said to have replied: “Sure. And Michelangelo was good at painting ceilings.”
It’s become common practice to give Tarantino’s words the same weight as those of an Old Testament prophet (or a 100 million disciple influencer), but of course he’s right: John Woo can really do action, and he’s been doing it ever since 1970s, and any director directing action today who claims he wasn’t influenced by Woo is either ignorant or arrogant.
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After a six-year break, the now 77-year-old godfather of modern action films has picked up the camera again, once again for Hollywood, with which Woo has had very mixed experiences – his best films were made in Asia. „Silent Night“ is a film in which tires screech and machine guns whip.
How many times have critics written desperately about action films that it would have been better to leave out the dialogue completely (because it’s so miserable), and now John Woo has answered their prayers: not a word is spoken in “Silent Night”. There is background music, there are noises (tires, machine guns and the sound of a music box) – but the main hero Joel Kinnaman He doesn’t have to say a word, which may have been convenient for him, as you can still hear the Swedish through his American.
The pure film
Since the invention of sound films almost 100 years ago, directors have always dreamed of turning back the clock and making the “pure film” that tells everything with its images, without these unnecessary crutches of words. Maybe that also appealed to John Woo.
His main hero is called Brian Godluck (only one letter less cynical than Goodluck) and is a good family man – until the moment when the cars of two rival drug gangs roll past his pretty front yard and a stray bullet from a submachine gun fatally hits his little son. Father Brian gives chase and catches the main villain, but he shoots him in the larynx at close range. Godluck will never speak again, but survives; Maybe that’s his divine luck, because experienced narcos don’t actually leave witnesses alive.
Joel Kinnaman as Brian Godluck on the hunt for his child’s murderers in John Woo’s Silent Night
Those: Carlos Latapi/Lionsgate
With this, Woo has his hero where he wants him: incapable and increasingly unwilling to communicate, consumed by the desire for revenge. The few who could dissuade him – his wife, a police officer – are soon banished from the film, and what’s left is an automaton with blinders, a one-man justice squad like Liam Neeson in “96 Hours,” training for the next Christmas Eve , on which the great reckoning is to take place, exactly one year after the death of his son.
In between you have enough time to check what is left of the legendary John Woo. From his trademarks, for example. He’s always liked flying white doves as symbols of souls flying to heaven after a shootout, but here Woo erases all thoughts of God at the latest when Godluck tears off his necklace with the cross on it; All that remains of the pigeons is a red balloon, which flies away after the boy’s death.
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Since time immemorial, Woo heroes (and villains) have carried a pistol in each hand. What was originally used so that the hero could kill ten instead of five villains in the same time, now has its own term – “Gun Fu” – and has become a fashion accessory for hip action films, even Tom Cruise fired with both hands in Woo’s “Mission Impossible 2”. . Of course, Joel Kinnaman also uses the trick, after all, the Angry White Man has a whole horde of Hombres Latinos to deal with.
The iconic image of John Travolta and Nicolas Cage holding a gun to each other’s heads is also a Woo signature, and he repeats it at the end of “Silent Night,” only the effect falls flat because it’s the confrontation of two good guys is (the only ones the film knows). That’s how it feels for the entire 100 minutes, you recognize the handwriting, you feel the energy, but everything seems formulaic and effortful, the choreography of the shooting no longer takes your breath away.
The Michelangelo of action unpacks his old tricks one last time, but they are no longer anything special. They have become common property.
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