 Legendary filmmaker John Woo returns back into action with Silent Night, not to be confused with Violent Night that came out last year, or Silent Night that came out in 2021. There's a lot of these types of movie titles, but let's talk about this new one. This video is brought to you by BrewRunner, Pittsburgh's beer and wine delivery service. Schedule your delivery today at www.412brewrunner.com. Joel Kineman stars as Angry Dad. He has lost a child when this movie starts out and the rest of the film is gonna be him doing what he can to avenge his son's death. This is an hour and 45 minutes long. It has a gimmick to it and a little bit of it works, but a lot of it doesn't, and it's weird. I'm not sure why the gimmick even exists. So the whole thing is this is a silent film as far as the audio goes. As far as the dialogue goes, there's no dialogue. There is sound effects, there's everything else is in play, but the people don't talk, except for on radios in the background and maybe a who and a ha and an a once in a while. It's silent otherwise. Think of the Hulu movie, No One Will Save You, I think is what it was called. It was a very generic title. The movie was not great either. I know my wife liked it, but I wasn't into it. She probably went like this either. It's very hard on the blood. It's got a lot of action, which I dig all that, but it does overstay its welcome. Like a lot of movies seem to do these days. At an hour 45, there just isn't enough here. Now that's not to say I had a bad time. I actually, you know, I was along for the ride for the most part. I just wanted to get off a little early and so did the people in the theater with me. I always gauge a good audience reaction when the phones start to come out because of the ADD minds we all apparently have now. I myself hate taking out phones. I don't do it. And I kind of want to curse everyone around me who's so freaking rude. They can't just focus on a film or leave. That's an option. Just leave. The front row was a big family get together. They all went to the mom, the dad, the kids. I guess this is the movie they thought was going to bring the family together, which sometimes it can. My family likes to watch Die Hard every year. But yeah, the phones were out pretty heavily in that last 25 minutes or so. And it's because the plot is very simple, which I also think is fine as well. I like when it's a quick to the point movie, but you got to get it done quick too. So we have this character that doesn't have a lot to say. He has nothing to say. We start out with him. This is going to be spoiler free, by the way. It will be spoiler free. So please subscribe, show some support. Like the video. Tell your mom. Your mom might like it here. The dad at the beginning loses a son. He is married. The wife and him are distraught and he can't talk due to an injury being fucking shot in the throat. That's going to do a number on you. So for the rest of the movie, this salt of the earth blue collar worker, I don't actually know what his profession is. He apparently gets disability because he has plenty of time to kind of tinker around in his garage workshop, figure out who these people are, these gang members in this lawless society that he's in and he's going to take them down because a stray bullet took out his kid. So now he's going to use bullets and not make him stray on them. He's going to aim true. He's going to aim steady. And he's going to do this by practicing, by honing his craft, which means going to the gun range, working out, cliche pull up bar. He's going to do all of this and more so he can avenge his son. It's a solid paint by numbers, pretty straightforward affair, right? We've seen this a billion times. It feels like a 90s movie in a lot of ways. There's definitely the John Wick stank coming over here. I love John Wick. I love nobody. I really dug atomic blonde. This is kind of John Woo in that playground, but he's still keeping some of his weird traits. There's a lot of slow motion. There's some really weird zoom ins where he's just, he loves the eyes and he loves touching faces all the time. So there's some really weird, like kind of zoom in freeze shots for no reason. He is playing a little bit with some of the artsiness of the movie, which keeps it fresh, but it also keeps it a little bizarre at times. Action wise, there's a good chunk of it in the second half. Woo is really slow burning this thing to get to this point. I appreciate that in a sense. You know, you're learning about what this guy has to do. He's not John Wick. He's trying to become him. And in order to do so, he's gonna have to put in the work. And so we spent a full year with this guy honing his craft. The problem is there's no dialogue and there's not a lot of interesting shots going on. This isn't Wally. We're on a junk land for 25 minutes before there's any real audio and there's a lot of like visual splendor to take in. This isn't Castaway where it's a beautiful beach setting and we're seeing Tom Hanks really learn the trade. No, it's mostly a guy in his garage trying to figure things out and then he's gonna go out on the attack. And we have an hour and 45 of this. It's just too long. So I don't think this movie is great. I think it's watchable, but you also don't need to watch it. If you're a big John Woo guy, I'm sure you'll probably check it out. You might like it. I like John Woo stuff. I've seen mostly his schlocky American things and hard boiled and a couple of the the chow young fat stuff back in the day. But face off, this is not. This is not face off. This isn't some of his sillier antics. There's no catchphrases in this movie because there's no dialogue in this movie. There is some cool gun foo. There is some great explosions. There's some car driving sequences. You know, if you're a dude bro looking to get your kill on, you're gonna get some of that. I just wish it moved a little faster. I wish it wasn't so bizarre with the way that he handles some of his artsy stuff. And I really didn't get the point of the gimmick of not being able to talk. It just seemed unnecessary all around. Score wise, honestly, I don't remember much of a soundtrack in this. There's probably a score that goes through it, but nothing that really hit home. There isn't a kick ass soundtrack by any means. There isn't a die hard theme running through this thing. And now we have the, of course, Christmas aspect. It's called Silent Night. We see the trailers, we're in a Rudolph sweater. It's around Christmas. You know, he's gonna get this done on Christmas. These kills are gonna happen. What else is there? A lot of people complain die hard is in a Christmas movie. I'll never understand that. Christmas is very much baked into the recipe of that film. Violent Night came out last year with Santa doing all the John Wicking. What does this have? Very little. I think this is far less of a Christmas movie than die hard is. Besides a Christmas sweater and Christmas being the day to take these guys out, there's just not really anything here tying it to the holiday. Maybe a Christmas present in the mix once in a while. There's no snow. There's no Caroline. I didn't see a snowman. I didn't see a outside of the sweater. There's no reindeer. There's just really nothing tying it together at all. There's no catchphrases around the holidays, of course, because again, no dialogue. I mean, he could have made the kill date Thanksgiving or Easter or Independence Day or whatever, nothing would have changed. Those are my thoughts, not terrible, but not something I'd recommend running out to see. Maybe catch it on Netflix if you're really interested in it. If you saw this already, it's been out for a few days. Maybe you have. Comment below. Did you dig this? Did you hate this? Or are you like me and you're like eh, eh, eh, it was watchable but kind of a miss, I think at the end. Let me know. Please, again, subscribe if you haven't. Like the video, share it, do all that stuff. This will also be up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. You can listen to it and not have to watch. And that's cool too. All right, hopefully I catch you next time. Merry early Christmas or happy holidays or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. It's all good. Take care.