Joel Kinnaman as Godlock and Catalina Sandino as Saya in Silent Night. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate
A gritty revenge tale, Silent Night grips from the opening frame with a desperation that is tangible. Underneath the shock and anguish is a sense of urgency.
However, Silent Night is not any ordinary film. This new way of telling an action movie – without dialogue – will also surely appeal to audiences and provoke their curiosity. What sets this style apart from the traditional silent film is that it’s also an action movie, which only increases its level of complexity.
Brian Godlock (portrayed brilliantly by Joel Kinnaman, The Suicide Squad, The Informer, In Treatment) is a tormented father who witnesses his young son’s (Anthony Giulietti) death after being caught in a gang’s crossfire and struck by a stray bullet on Christmas Eve.
His wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace, Barbarians) is equally devastated.
Brian hunts down and successfully locates a handful of the culprits. However, his confrontation with the gang leader, a heavily tattooed Playa (Harold Torres, ZeroZeroZero, Run Coyote Run) sees him losing his ability to speak, along with his will to live.
It’s only when his wife decides to leave their home that Brian finds the motivation he needs to keep going: vengeance. There was nothing anyone could do to make it right, but Brian’s “willing to die trying”. He heads into the underworld to avenge his son’s death, and his despair is palpable!
His voiceless emotions resonate intelligibly. Even as the flashbacks come and go, they blend seamlessly into reality of the present. The realisation of times past is realistic, yet binding.
The film shows emotional extremes and their violent fallout. Car and motorcycle chases, stabbings, shootings, bone-breaking. Though a distinctive trademark, it’s a departure from director John Woo’s regular style, which has surprised a few and intrigued others with an awareness that silence may not always be golden.
Woo opted not to have any actor dialogue in this action-thriller and focused on his own unique visual and sound techniques to engage audiences. Guns do a lot of talking. The importance of the visuals of this story and its characters is highlighted by the fact that there is no ‘spoken’ dialogue in this film. Each character has to rely on their ability to communicate through available tools and skills that don’t require speaking.
Graphic gunfire and action sequences involving cars, motorbikes and men with guns will be confronting. However, audiences will walk away having a distinctive cinematic experience.
“Silent Night works better without dialogue to get in the way of whatever carnage its restless hero requires in order to sleep in heavenly peace once again,” Woo said.
“Making a film without dialogue is more difficult. It’s not an easy job to do. You have to think more than usual. You need to find new ways, new style, and a very unique language to tell the story. Unique visual language to tell the story. The sound, the vision. Using the vision instead of the language. It’s not easy work. It needs a lot of thought.
“There’s no dialogue but there’s a lot of art. A lot of emotion, and excitement. The action is very dynamic with a lot of different layers. There’s fighting, gun fighting, car action. And then you counter that with some very intense drama where we got to emotional levels that we were hoping to get to.”
John Woo (Mission: Impossible 2, Face/Off, Hard Target) has established his reputation as a master stylist specialising in ultra-violent gangster films and thrillers, with hugely elaborate action scenes shot with remarkable panache.
While he likes a challenge, Woo also spills on one of his favourite scenes in the film: “There’s a fighting scene with Joel with a guy in a garage. Basically it was a real fight. When we shot that it was really intense. This kind of action is hard to create in one scene and it’s hard to describe. Actors find a way to fuel themselves.”
Since one doesn’t have to learn lines, everything else becomes so much more important: the camera movement, the intensity of our inner life, what’s expressed in our eyes, body language. It really demands intense preparation. This technique is exciting, experimental in some ways and intriguing.
Silent Night opened in cinemas on 7 December.
