Action was solid, but it takes a while to get going and the minimal dialogue aspect worked well in some parts and felt awkward in others. Also for being advertised as a Christmas movie, nothing about it felt like a Christmas movie other than the fact it's set on Christmas Eve. Nothing special, but decent enough action movie.
6/10
It's definitely not a Christmas movie. In terms of having an actual connection to Christmas, it makes Die Hard look like Miracle on 34th Street. If you want to see an action movie that actually also successfully passes as a Christmas film, Violent Night is the one.
That said, I did enjoy this one. I was apprehensive about the no-dialogue aspect, but I thought it worked pretty well. And John Who's stylized visuals and action were frankly pretty amazing.
Solid 7/10 for me.
Agree about Violent Night. That was solid
shareBesides a Christmas tune or two, and a bit of snow. You wouldn't have thought it was a Christmas movie.
It's not a great film even for it's genre. 5.9 on IMDB is just about right. If it didn't have John Woo's name on it, the film would have probably gone straight to streaming and not got a sniff of a Cinema release.
It takes to mid point of the film until a sniff of action kicks in.And even then it's not going to compete with the likes of John Wick, The Raid, Nobody, Extraction films, The Equalizer when it comes to the action scenes. Plus you just shouldn't be spending 50 minutes of drama in action film. Joel Kinnaman does his best with the role. But Woo's peak has come and gone, check out Hard Boiled, Face/Off, Hard Target and The Killer to see him at his best.
I'd go 5/10, not woeful or anything just better action films out there.
Yeah a by the numbers revenge flick. But good God did they overdo the grief stuff. It's like they took that theme from Face/Off and dialed it up to eleven. Stopping in the middle of his bloodbath every few minutes to have a cry was unnecessary. We had all that during the build up in the first hour....just give us the pay off! It would have made the stuff at the very end more impactful.
Oh and it sure was nice of the Detective to join him in his vigilante suicide mission for no reason whatsoever.