Violent Night (2022)

 

One of the debates that pops up every year is whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas film.  I am with the side that says it is.  Not because it takes place in December, since I do not believe that automatically qualifies a movie as being a holiday film, but because Christmas is a central part of the movie.  Christmas music is used, references are made and the whole attack on Nakatomi plaza happens during an office Christmas party.  Every single thing screams Christmas.

On the other hand, nobody debates that Home Alone is a Christmas film.  Its connection to the holiday is no less tenuous than Die Hard, but because it has a kid and there is snow on the ground no one has a problem with embracing it as a holiday tradition.  This, despite the fact that the booby traps Kevin uses would leave the Wet Bandits just as dead as John McClane leaves Hans Gruber's band of thieves.  In fact, plot wise, they are not too far from being the same movie, just that both handle the violence differently.

What writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller, along with director Tommy Wirkola, have done is try to end that debate by taking elements of both Die Hard and Home Alone and caking them in large amounts of saccharine Christmas magic a la Elf.  What results is an uneven blend of comedy, action and family holiday film that never quite works on any of the levels they want it to.

Santa Claus (David Harbour) is having a rough time of it and is considering retiring.  Everyone is ordering gifts from Amazon, nobody believes in him and he's tired of milk and has started hitting the bourbon.  Meanwhile, Jason Lightstone (Alex Hassell) and his wife Linda (Alexis Louder) are on the outs, with Jason's mother Gertrude (Bevely D'Angelo) being a big part of it.  Along with their daughter Trudy (Leah Brady) they visit Gertrude on Christmas Eve, where she is also entertaining Jason's sister Alva (Edi Patterson), her son Bert (Alexander Elliot) and Alva's b-list celebrity boyfriend Morgan Steel (Cam Gigandet).  

To make a tense situation even worse the party is crashed by a team of mercenaries led by a man calling himself Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo) who intend to steal money that Gertrude diverted from secret payments from the U.S. to shady dictators literally into her own vault.  The problem is they decide to invade just as Santa is delivering presents for the family and having a break in a massage chair with some Scotch.  After his magic fails and his reindeer leave him Santa is forced to take things into his own hands to clear a few names from his naughty list. 

The best thing about Violent Night is David Harbour as Santa Claus.  He is just as confused about how everything works as anyone and there is no big explanation given on how he became Father Christmas, only some information on his past.  It pretty much ignores him being Saint Nicholas and instead carries on a more northern European tradition of him coming from the land of ice and snow, although no references to Finland are made either.  As for the story, bloody as it is, it's the usual tried and true arc of rediscovering the true meaning of Christmas, both for Santa and the Lightstones.

That last part is laid on a bit thick.  John Leguizamo, an actor that annoys me to no end, dials it back for this movie but the character itself is given lots of exposition on why he hates Christmas so much.  It's not just one speech about it but repeated dialog over and over that suffocates the viewer more than it drives the point home.  

This could be ignored if many of the action and comedy bits didn't fall a bit flat.  Wirkola came to be known due to Dead Snow and Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead, both Norwegian horror comedies about Nazi zombies.  The first worked, but the second felt like there was too much effort to be offensive as possible, up to blowing up a baby for comedic effect.  Violent Night feels similar, as if Wirkola is too eager of a host, pushing everything on the audience as if he was afraid they won't be properly satisfied at the end.  It works when the right people are involved, like Beverly D'Angelo as the foul-mouthed matriarch, or when henchmen Candy Cane (Mitra Suri) and Gingerbread (André Eriksen) are realistically maimed by Trudy's attempts to do booby traps like she saw in Home Alone.

Violent Night still can't help being a likeable film even if the end is about as sappy as a Christmas card and the writing isn't much better.  However, the performances of Harbour and D'Angelo are strong enough to overcome much of it.  Although filled with references to Die Hard this still has enough originality to be entertaining.  It just never reaches the heights of comedy or action that its influences do.

Violent Night (2022)

Time: 112 minutes

Starring: David Harbour, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady, Beverly D'Angelo, John Leguizamo

Director: Tommy Wirkola