Violent Night (2022)

When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.

It’s pretty good! There’s still a part about family values in there, and the Santa character behaves as a spooked burglar (though at this point it seems like a distinctive trait of David Harbour), but overall it’s a great gory fun, for ’tis the season!

The actors are mostly amazing, perhaps grandmother being least believable, pretty much copying the manners of Shohreh Aghdashloo’s Avasarala from The Expanse – but she didn’t have much screen time so no big deal. The rest were great, John Leguizamo in particular.

And the gory version of “Home Alone” traps… the highlight of the whole film, that was!

Highly entertaining movie. I love gory stuff and this one did not shy away from it.

However, can we just stop making the villains in movies foreigners? This trope is soooo outdated. Robbers and highly trained assassins can also be your redneck neighbour, who’s name is Bob.

Also, this is not the Christmas movie for children. So why does a Spanish-speaking character, which has been probably raised Catholic, keep on insisting that Christmas will not exist anymore if Santa is dead? Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It will always be around. He’d know that. And I’m not even religious.

I went into this movie knowing nothing about it. I would like to shake the hand of the man who thought “you know what would be cool? Diehard but John Mclane is Santa”

John leguizamo does a fantastic job of playing Scrooge aka Hans Gruber. The relationship between Santa and the little girl is a great comparison to Mclane and Al Powell.

David Horbour seems to channel his inner Jim Hopper at times.

Loved seeing Beverly D’Angelo in this as well. Casting is strong all the way around.

Great mix of comedy and action. I like how the movie doesn’t take itself seriously at all and that reigns throughout the entire film.