Violent Night (2022)
You better watch out.
Tonight’s movie is straight off the press. I know I try not to do these normally because it’s almost always conflicting goals with not giving away a lot but still talking about all the parts that are favorites, but you can’t expect me to pass up what looks like a cater-made Christmas movie days before Christmas lands. Oh yeah, that’s right, tonight Santa is bringing a whole new level of punishment to the naughty list - tonight is a Violent Night.
Our story is two fold - the story of Santa and struggling with disillusionment towards his role in things and the story of a wealthy family of jerks getting together for the holidays. The wealthy family’s night is quickly interrupted when some robbers wipe out their security staff with the goal of landing millions of dollars in the family’s security vault - and Santa ends up getting embroiled in this plot when it all goes down as he’s taking a nap upstairs. With his ride scared off, Santa has to try and escape until his holiday spirit gets the best of him, and the mission swaps from survival to defend on behest of the adorable little girl who really needs his help. Naughty or nice, this night is going to be one heck of a ride.
The acting is pretty good here. Yes, some of the characters are cheesy and we aren’t striving for a large depth of the pool of character intricacies - but don’t let that fool you. The actors play their roles quite well, and for the most part seem like they had a blast with their roles. Action, humor, serious moments with impossible components all get played off as you would expect them to, and it feels good. There’s some touching moments in there - mostly on Santa’s front between him and the kid - and although I’m not going to say I was specifically blown away, I was surprised to see how serious most the acting felt throughout the movie given the concept would be real easy to over-ham.
The characters themselves flick between serious and comedy as the situation calls, with pretty much any face-less foe being fodder. As mentioned, not everyone is huge depths of character - the actor guy is a shallow stupid actor guy, as one would expect. The rich sister is stuck up and money-obsessed. Of the villains, only Leguizamo’s character really has any tier of building to him, and even that really is just set up with “had one really bad Christmas, therefore now evil.” It works, as I’m not really looking for massive Emmy-tier character building in a movie that’s effectively Santa vs the violent Money Snatchers.
Santa pre-games.
The setting is pretty close nit - largely the big old family mansion house. It provides a bunch of different rooms for things to go down, while also having some nice outside areas and the Santa Shack as it will live in my mind forever now. Lighting is well done, and it does manage that holiday feel without being overtly plastered with holiday greetings all over the place. The costumes are well enough done, although largely normal every day kind of fair - even on account of the baddies who are slightly more Christmas themed, even if a tac vest get’s layered over them by the end. Santa looks good, and this time around has some pretty nice Tat’s too.
The action is great. It’s not overtly cut, it’s easy to see and well lit. It’s good things and plenty of action fans will love whats on display - that being said, some of it is certainly brutal, so I guess as long as you can stomach the violence it’s a great time. Yes, some might thing Santa committing murder is taboo - but you know what? Naughty list gets it’s lumps one way or another is what I say. The violent parts themselves are quite passable in the effects department, although it’s a little bit varying degrees of if it’s super convincing. It’s a lot of digital stuff for the over the top parts - and you’ll generally know when something is digital as opposed to the practical parts - but you know what? Watching this I really didn’t mind. In the back of my head the analytical me might call it out as “that’s some CG looking blood there” but I was too busy having fun and “Oooo”ing and “Awwww”ing to really care about it in the moment.
Sound is balanced well, and you’ll hear everything you need. The music is pretty much what you would expect from a holiday movie - which is made more funny by the content on display whilst said expected holiday music is playing. There’s something about a bad guy getting their come-uppance to some happy little holiday jingle that helps push the entertainment level further to fun with how preposterous it feels, much like the situation as a whole. Line deliveries are done quite well - even if the character might be annoying, it never feels like actors are breaking their character and all is intended.
Good tidings instead.
If you are the kind of person who pushed Die Hard as a Christmas movie (which I’d say it is at any rate), then I imagine you’d enjoy this. As the title states, it is quite a bit violent, but the mix of holiday cheer and brutal beat downs is wonderful to watch. On top of that, it contains all manner of throwbacks to other things - including plenty of Checkov’s guns down to that opening comment about Home Alone. It’s a fun time, and quite well put together, and honestly it’ll probably become something I put on around each Christmas, because I just had that much fun with it.