Universal Pictures has released the Christmas movie ‘Silent Night’, which has David Harbour, best known for playing Hopper in Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’, as a barbaric variation of drunken Santa Claus to star in an action-comedy thriller, which for almost two hours defies the concept of a holiday movie, as it is Rated R for strong gore, swearing, and sexual references.
There are two types of alternative Christmas movies, those that are a review of the artificiality of the party, like ‘Bad Santa’ and those that, despite their adult themes they embrace the spirit and have the same good intentions. Here the director Tommy Wirkola directs a kind of homage to ‘Die Hard, 1988) and ‘Home Alone’ (1990), two films with more in common than it seems, but with the spirit of the film that “inspired” Chris Columbus’s, ‘Game Over: Game Over‘ (1989), which in turn was inspired by the classic with Bruce Willis.
All three are set at Christmas and take place in the same location, with a survivor fighting criminals. What the French film had was that the boy setting traps had to get rid of a thief dressed as Santa Claus, a relationship that Pat Casey and Josh Miller’s script reverses, turning the good-natured arctic into the hidden antiheroalthough the girl he befriends is a fan of the Macaulay Culkin movie and will also have his leading role.
Reluctantly saving Christmas
The Saint Nicholas of david harbor he is fed up with it, he is depressed by his lack of faith in humanity and tired of having to fill the socks of spoiled children, while doing his Christmas homework he visits the Lightstone residence, where Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo) hosts his daughter Alva (Eddy Patterson), his son Jason (Alex Hasell) and their immediate family members. But in the midst of their delivery work, a team of mercenaries, led by “Mr. Scrooge” (John Leguizamo) has broken into the Lightstone property in search of three hundred million dollars.
And this is where the John McTiernan movie is replicated, when Santa Claus seems to be the only one who can save the family, with a little help from girl Trudy (Leah Brady), who communicates with the hero with a walkie (we sounds). There are moments in which the homage to the classic is so obvious that even moments from the second part are rescued, such as the sled team. Wirkola, however, imitates the violence of the films of its producers, such as ‘Nobody’ and ‘John Wick’, introducing a good number of action sequences, although the choreographies and planning are up to those.
If ‘Silent Night’ works, it’s because you see Harbor banging with a mallet, bringing the savagery of some of the deaths to gore horror cinema for which the director is known, although it is noticeable that he has not advanced much in his handling of the staging, which remains flat and stingy, despite the abundance of blows and shots. The film doubles the bet when he tries to mix the liters of blood with the candidness of well-meaning family cinema.
Now I have a viking hammer, ho ho ho
uses the existing tropes of the cheesiest Christmas genre, but at the same time it earns its R rating with the requisite carnage. The biggest skid in this sense is the use of anachronistic and topical music from television cinema, with the classic “cat on tiptoe” notes from 90s children’s comedies that are not only outdated, but are torture to listen to. this point in the story.
Fortunately the script is much more witty and full of ideas, from the traps to its ingenious use of decorations and Christmas motifs as ways to crush, and it accompanies much better the very good work of David Harbour, who presents a wonderful performance that integrates angles of humanity to a mythological character that we can come to understand, with his usual catalog of traits of an irascible man but noble, with a paternal relationship with children that only he knows how to transmit.
‘Silent Night’ is a fun and very bloody Christmas prank with the real Santa Claus as the accidental hero. Have too many good decisions and deaths to account for his crude directionand above all, it gives us another great role between the barbaric and the tender of David Harbour, who is doing oppositions to interpret ‘Groo, the wanderer’ or any sword and sorcery movie with a wild hero but with a heart.