“Silent Night” tries to put an unconventional spin on its very familiar genre elements. While this is your average revenge drama action flick, the movie has itself driven mostly by actions instead of words from the beginning to the end, and this storytelling choice makes it interesting to some degree, though its overall result still dutifully follows the footsteps of many of its senior vigilante films such as “Death Wish” (1974).

After opening with a striking action sequence, the movie gradually establishes the devastated status of Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman), a plain family guy who was suddenly struck by a very shocking tragedy. While he and his wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) were spending a wholesome time with their little son at their residence, they were unfortunately caught in the crossfire of a drive-in shooting between the two local drug organization, and their son was killed as a consequence. Quite shocked and enraged, Brian ran after these bad guys, but he only got himself seriously injured in his neck, and that sadly led to his loss of voice.

After eventually released from a hospital, Brian tries to recover along with his wife, but he cannot help but become angrier over their irreversible loss. Moreover, those criminals responsible for his son’s death are not caught by the local police yet, and, to his exasperation and frustration, he comes to discern that he will not get much help from them, though there is one detective who is clearly sympathetic to his case.

In the end, Brian decides to take care of the matter for himself. First, he gets some basic information about a bunch of criminals including the one who shot him in the neck at that time, and then he begins to gather more information about them in private. In addition, he also focuses on training himself a lot for acquiring a particular set of skills necessary for what he is planning to do.

As Brian accordingly comes to spend more time alone in the garage of his house, he naturally becomes more estranged from his wife than before. While quite more concerned about him than before, Saya also becomes more frustrated to realize that there is really nothing she can do about their increasingly distant relationship, and we are not so surprised by her subsequent choice. Although her role feels thankless at first, Catalina Sandino Moreno, a wonderful Colombian actress who has steadily established her solid acting career since her Oscar-nominated breakthrough turn in “Maria Full of Grace” (2004), fills her character with enough human warmth and sensitivity, and she is particularly good when she and her co-star wordlessly convey to us the growing estrangement between their characters.

The movie continues to take more time as its hero prepares more and more during next several months. While still haunted by the memories of his dead son, Brian becomes all the more determined to eliminate all of those criminals associated with his son’s death, and he is fully prepared to say the least when his scheduled D-Day eventually comes.

Even around that point, the movie sticks to its taciturn attitude along with its hero, who surely does not need to explain or justify anything as driven more by his urge for justice and vengeance. Looking as stoic as Charles Bronson in “Death Wish”, Joel Kinnaman ably embodies his character’s quiet anger and steely determination without any unnecessary exaggeration, and his intense performance is certainly crucial in holding our attention to the end.

Once it goes for more action and intensity during its second half, the movie does not disappoint us at all with a series of gritty action sequences, and director John Woo, an influential Hong Kong filmmaker who has been mainly known for his classic Hong Kong action noir films such as “A Better Tomorrow” (1986), pulls all the stops when his movie eventually reaches to the climactic part along with its hero. His crew members including cinematographer Sharone Meir and editor Zach Staenberg did a skillful job of imbuing the screen with enough style and tension, and the score by Marco Beltrami mostly restrains itself while bringing some extra intensity to the film from time to time.

The main weakness of the screenplay by Robert Archer Lynn lies in its rather thin characters besides Brian and Saya. While Harold Torres is menacing enough as the final boss of the story, his character is no more than a cardboard figure to be shot down just like many other criminals targeted by our vengeful hero, and that is the main reason why the finale lacks some dramatic impact compared to the other key scenes in the film. In case of Kid Cudi, he manages to leave some impression as that sympathetic cop character, but his character remains to be no more than a plot element despite his earnest efforts.

In conclusion, “Silent Night” is not wholly satisfying enough for recommendation, but I must say that it is really nice to see Woo still continuing his filmmaking career as before (This is his first American film since “Paycheck” (2003), by the way). He seemed to be losing his distinctive individual touch especially during last two decades, but he demonstrates here that he is still a good action movie director even though his prime period has passed for many years, and I can only hope that he will go up more after this flawed but fascinating genre experiment.