When the words “Christmas movie” are uttered, some will probably conjure an image of wholesome films like Home Alone, Elf, White Christmas or The Grinch and some will imagine non-traditional films like Die Hard or Lethal Weapon. Audiences will be forever torn about what to watch during the holiday season but Violent Night is a film that surprisingly manages to successfully straddle the line as a Christmas film but with a lot of heart and violent delights.
Violent Night does a remarkable job of introducing a not so jolly version of Saint Nicholas as he is seen drinking in an English pub and lamenting that children are becoming more and more ungrateful. As he’s seen taking off in his sleigh, he makes it a point to vomit on the poor bartender. It is the first reminder that this Santa has no more fucks to give.
The setting then shifts to the upscale community of Greenwich, Connecticut and the ultra-wealthy Lightstone family and immediately becomes the most unlikeable family since the Mansons. The matriarch, played by Beverly D’Angelo, is on a business call while neglecting her family, she has forced the catering staff to work full shifts on Christmas Eve, her daughter is more concerned about gaining the family’s vast fortune than being a parent to her live streaming teenage son but the lone innocence in this situation is granddaughter Trudy, who is still young enough to believe in Santa Claus and just wants her parents to reconcile for Christmas.
The Die Hard parallels are consistent throughout the film but become even more evident when the Lightstone family is taken hostage by a group of criminals using holiday themed codenames. The leader of this group, played by John Leguizamo, seems to have a vendetta against Christmas and therefore Santa even though he doubts the very real presence of him as he manages to brutally dispatch each criminal. The fight scenes are especially brutal, reminiscent of the John Wick films complete with the brutality and frenetic pace but they are made comical with the inclusion of David Harbour’s performance as Santa Claus.
Harbour has a perfect everyman quality to him but offers a wish fulfillment similar to John McLane in Die Hard; every man would love to believe that he is capable of taking down a building full of terrorists while reconciling with their family. Harbour’s version of Santa Claus is the holiday film version of the 21st Century male; dispassionate, rudderless and cynical of the world but finds hope in the innocence and the desire to protect it. This version of Santa just so happened to be a Viking warrior thousands of years ago who opted to swap his Warhammer for a sack of toys so like Die Hard, our hero is uniquely equipped to save the Lightstones and save Christmas. Violent Night’s Santa is someone who probably enjoyed the violence of their past life a bit too much but finds it all too easy to pick up right where he left off. Not only does Violent Night share similarities with Die Hard, there are numerous parallels to Home Alone particularly in the creative ways that the criminals are killed and there is even a scene where Trudy builds a series of traps to kill more criminals. It is truly the most humorous scene in the film as the orchestral score plays traditional Christmas carols over the carnage and gore unfolding onscreen.
In spite of the seemingly derivative premise, Violent Night surprisingly has a lot of heart; Trudy’s mother and father do manage to reconcile, the Lightsones come together to defend each other and settle old feuds, Santa rediscovers the magic of the season and resolves to finish his annual mission of bringing joy to children and everyone renews their belief in jolly old Saint Nicholas. While Violent Night does not quite live up to the entertainment value of its inspirations, it is able to claw its way into the conversation as one of the better Christmas films to come out in recent memory and David Harbour is charismatic and capable enough to be an action bad ass while bringing his trademark style to the film.
VERDICT: 3.5 candy cane knives out of 5
