Violent Night

This violent action comedy is a Christmas miracle – a film that is both a hilariously funny send-up of action and Christmas movie tropes, at the same time as being a hugely enjoyable entry into both genres.

Premise:  Tired of mankind’s unquenchable greed, Santa Claus (David Harbour) is contemplating hanging up his magic sack of presents for good … until one Christmas Eve, he gets caught up in a plot led by the Christmas-hating ‘Mr Scrooge’ (John Leguizamo) to steal a fortune from a wealthy industrialist (Beverly D'Angelo) and her obnoxious family.

Review:

This is the second film in 2022 to be produced by the relatively new production company 87North, which has already released the hugely enjoyable Bullet Train earlier this summer (and before that, the excellent Nobody last year).  If you’ve seen either of those films, you’ll have some idea of what to expect from Violent Night – it’s another darkly comic, tongue-in-cheek, brilliantly choreographed action flick with laugh-out-loud moments married perfectly with bone-crunching and inventive fight sequences.

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you tipped The Santa Clause, Die Hard (and Die Hard 2), Home Alone, John Wick and The Christmas Chronicles into a blender, Violent Night is probably what you’d get – and yes, it is as much fun as that sounds!  At times it wears its inspirations on its sleeves, with sequences that feel like direct homages to specific parts of Die Hard, and characters actually referring to bits of Home Alone in dialogue – but it’s all done in such a good-natured and genuinely funny way, all is forgiven.

“…David Harbour is perfect casting to play this version of Santa Claus…”

In many ways, Violent Night’s perceived lack of originality is part of the joke – we’re seen endless movies pitched as “Die Hard on a…” or “Die Hard with a…”, but never the pitch “what if instead of John McClane being the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was the real Santa Claus”?!  The ridiculousness of that pitch is itself part of the film’s sense of humour, as this whole movie plays out like a full-length version of the fake trailer for “The Night The Reindeer Died” at the start of Scrooged.  All that was missing was David Harbour saying “But this is one Santa that's going out the front door” (although he does get plenty of other outrageously cheesy action lines).

David Harbour is perfect casting to play this version of Santa Claus, whether he’s jaded and losing himself at the bottom of a bottle at the start of the film, showing his softer side to the children who still believe in him, or beginning to embrace his inner John McClane once the situation escalates.  His performance is complemented by the brilliantly over-the-top villainous performance from John Leguizamo as the self-proclaimed ‘Mr Scrooge’ (because he hates Christmas so much).  The attempt to manufacture a personal grudge between ‘Mr Scrooge’ and Santa is just one of the many hilarious parodies of typical action flick and Christmas movie tropes.

“…the action sequences are incredibly inventive & entertaining…”

I don’t want to say too much about the specifics of the movie, as half of the fun is seeing how things escalate in unexpected ways – but what I will say is that the action sequences are incredibly inventive and entertaining.  This is definitely one of those films where there are certain kills that are unlike anything you’ve seen before, and the audience I was with simultaneous gasped at the violence and laughed at its intentional excessiveness.

All in all, I had an absolute blast with this film – and it’s destined to be on rotation in my house every Christmas from now on.  Just make sure you put the kiddies to bed before the scene where Santa uses a sharpened candy cane as a makeshift shiv…