(Spoilers ahead:) Violent Night tells the story of a complicated hero who plans to steal from a privileged family of thieves. That’s not how you remember the trailer? Watch the movie and tell me I’m fucking wrong. Mr Scrooge, played by national treasure John Leguizamo, assembles a team of working class thieves to steal–Ocean’s Eleven-style–from war criminals and thieves. But this plot really plays second fiddle to some of the most satisfying fight scenes of the year. On the spectrum of choreographed fight scenes with the Matrix, Sherlock Holmes, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on one end and Stray Dog and You Were Never Really Here on the other, Violent Night sits comfortably on the Slapdash/Bar Brawl end.
Most of the kills are body horror, shriek-inducing, falling out of mouths like dominoes dropping, unexpected, unasked for. I was tempted to rank the deaths of the various victims of Santa, but I think that much like X or Jurassic World, each individual is going to find their yummiest murder on their own terms.
There are a variety of send ups to the Die Hard and Home Alone franchises, but everything is dialed up to eleven in terms of violence. The premise of Santa’s power scaling is that he’s sort of like a superhero, so he can withstand a lot more abuse than the regular guy (falling out of windows, off roofs, getting walloped in the face with canes and the butts of rifles, etc.), and when he hits you, you can fly through walls. David Harbour does an admirable job taking a beating in this movie, and really is there a kinder man you would want to watch have the shit kicked out of them? He boards the paintrain with the same painted acceptance as a child who has recently gathered that there is no exit from the rollercoaster at the top of the hill. Santa’s relationship with Mrs Claus is oddly sweet and pure. The movie is a lot of things, but it is not raunchy, which allows for Santa to retain a little bit of class even as he terrorizes the gang of do-gooders who are trying to liberate the world of this awful tyrant.
David Leitch, one in the same as Bullet Train‘s director, has done a fine job of critiquing the holidays in perceptive ways. Mr Scrooge’s Rashomon-meets-Joker-style storytelling is haunting my dreams in every moment that isn’t taken up by watching Wednesday’s Rave’n Ball dance. Did he really push that old man down the stairs? Is that why Santa didn’t visit again? Why did Santa condemn all the rest of Scrooge’s family when only he was responsible? Why didn’t Santa try to save THAT guy on Christmas that year like he was doing for that sweet nepotism baby in this movie? When Santa tries to obfuscate with the nepotism baby when asked about why he clearly doesn’t give a shit about 90% of the world population when distributing presents, he gives the most unsatisfying of answers, “I come to those who need me.” I call fucking bullshit and so does Scrooge, buddy.
I spent the Thanksgiving holiday with my in-laws and in the week that I spent there, I experienced first hand how dedicated a cinephile my MIL is, with all the ardor of a person trapped inside the house by cruel winter weather and set free by retirement. In between wrangling the monster we brought, her naps, and when she went to bed, I think I ended up watching in the span of six days: an entire season of a Netflix etiquette show staring a super judgey lady who wants to be the next Martha Stewart of China, the finale of the Tournament of Champions, Planes, Trains, and Automobile, two-thirds of Enola Holmes 2 (having never seen the first, which I’ve been told is not as good!), half of The World’s Greatest Beer Run, a collective half hour of several different episodes of Inside Man with David Tennant, the pilot to Wednesday, and half of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. I list my Thanksgiving movie consumption only to say that I had a lot to compare to Violent Night and it still found ways to glimmer and surprise. It has all the elements of an holiday cult classic.
