Violent Night review: David Harbour’s action-Santa movie is kind of a mess

the pitch of killer santa action comedy violent night It was probably incredible. The latest addition to the “dark, transcendent Christmas movie” canon combines the subgenre’s biggest hits. die hard meet home alonecombined with some of the rich man satires currently dominating cinema movies like sorrow triangle, menuWhen glass onionAnd of course there are the attractive angles stranger things David Harbor stars as a drunken Santa Claus. Throw in Viking flashbacks, torso explosions, Beverly D’Angelo, Bryan Adams’ Needle Drops, and a script from the writing team behind 2020’s Airy. Sonic the hedgehogand, on paper, what seemed like perhaps the greatest R-rated Christmas movie of all time. violent night Very lukewarm.

Part of violent nightThe sequence of satisfies the promise of the premise. The opening sequence sets the stage for the film very differently than the actual film. Santa Claus (Harbor) — not a delusional pretender, but the human myth itself — sits at a bar drinking sideways. The magic is gone, he moans at the bartender. Kids these days are just as greedy and cynical as their parents. All they do is “want, covet, consume.” He chugs his beer and walks out the door beside him. The bartender followed him, yelling that patrons shouldn’t be there because the door leads to the roof. When you reach the top, you’ll see Santa take off in his sleigh and your eyes will widen for a moment. She believes in her magic again — until she’s drenched in Santa’s nausea.

this is a moment violent night‘s cynical and starry threads merge nicely. Both unfold in lazy ways for most of the film.writer or Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Director Tommy Wirkola needs to get out of the narrative corners they’ve drawn, bubbling into earnest evocations of Christmas magic. establish. Much of the film’s influenced edge is directed toward the Lightstones, a clan of super-wealthy bastards (and relatively normal guys, because audiences always need a surrogate).

Patriarch Gertrude Lightstone (D’Angelo) is a billionaire power broker of sorts. While she remains vague about the exact nature of her job and her wealth, it’s clear she’s not the kind of person she would fuck. Gertrude’s sour parenting style skews her children, especially her daughter Alba (Eddie Patterson jewel of justice, up to similar surnames). Alba craves the validation her mother can never provide, and action star-wanna-be boyfriend Morgan Steele (Cam Gigandet) and influencer son Bert (Alexander Elliott) seek out her own impoverished. It’s an extension of the ego. In comparison, Lightstone’s son Jason (Alex Hassell) and his young daughter Trudy (Leah Brady) are very adaptable, but that’s the influence of Trudy’s mother, Linda (Alexis Lauder). may be due to

On Christmas Eve, the Lightstone family is taken hostage by a gang of career criminals led by Hans Gruber. A vicious, sharp-tongued rogue codenamed Scrooge (John Leguizamo). The crook’s goal is to steal his $300 million in cash from the Lightstone family vault. And what if some wealthy jerk dies in the process? oh well. The movie doesn’t do a very good job of discussing why audiences should care if the main characters make it through the night. violent night Giving the Lightstones their own John McClane: Santa Claus was trapped in the Lightstone Manor after falling asleep drunk in a massage chair during a cookie binge.

Photo: Universal Pictures

But Santa Claus isn’t a character to build a movie on. At least, Haber’s version of Santa Claus doesn’t. Long stretches of the film are devoted to Harbor wandering around her estate and pouring her heart out to her young Trudy via the walkie-talkie her father gave her at the beginning of her film. (The way Santa got the other radio was “Hmm, magic?” The longer the movie spends with Santa, the less reasonable his motives become. And the audience has a lot of time to think about these things — violent night It crawls slowly along the way, becoming more talkative and earnest than the script can bear.

Harbor is really up for the job because he turns Santa into a Yuletide WWE character, sneaks up behind bad guys, grunts evil grins and grunts one-liners, and performs surgery on himself with a sewing kit. It’s only when I flash back on the way norsemanA styled sequence reveals that Santa was once a Viking warrior named Nicomond the Red.His skull-destroying tendencies of violence are conveniently triggered by the horrific circumstances of this particular Christmas Eve. violent night very weak It’s partly a choreography issue, partly a sound effect issue, but either way, it’s like listening to music on a stereo with one speaker broken. By comparison, the horror splatter effect is juicy and satisfying, another contradiction in this unfocused film.

Photo: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures

violent night It works best, especially when it captures the warped sensibilities of early 90’s Chris Columbus movies. home aloneThe events of that film are actually horrifyingly traumatic and violent, and are pointed out so often that it hardly needs to be said that Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister is a pint-sized sociopath. Trudy Lightstone also has a sadistic streak in her, and the film’s most insane scenes are played out with oversized cheers that effectively create a giggling disgust. The moment is intentionally designed. The film revels in snarky one-liners and outrageous gore for the audience, but overall, violent nightThe big red bag of self-awareness tricks is overstuffed.

violent night It hits theaters on December 2nd.