Violent Night is a film of silly violence. It combines the structure and themes of Die Hard (with Santa as John McClane) and Home Alone (Leah Brady as Kevin McCallister) with the morals and ideas of more traditional and cliched Christmas movies. David Harbour stars as a former viking warrior that became Santa Claus. He doesn’t really understand how his magic works, or how guns work, and ends up trapped at a billionaire’s private compound trying to save a family of the spoiled rich (highlighted by supporting actress Edi Patterson – a move away from her Knives Out character and towards Trudy in the Righteous Gemstones) from murderous thieves led by John Leguizamo.
Inspired by the compassion, faith, and ingenuity of Trudy (Brady), Santa rescues the Lightstone family, the separated parents (Alex Hassell and Alexis Louder) reconcile, and everyone learns that Christmas is about love, togetherness, and faith (in… Santa… I guess?) rather than obeisance to a narcissistic matriarch (Beverly D’Angelo). I guess an alternative (or galaxy brain/braindead cynical-contortionist) analysis of the film is that it’s about how women in power always lead to ruin and need salvation from a male tradition of violence, but that would be in contradiction with Santa’s own arc and consideration of when violence is necessary or gratuitous. The film is in some ways about how avaricious wealth necessarily invites envy from the less well-off and the laborers who make a wealthy lifestyle accessible, so people should spread it around instead of hoarding it, and if they’re of means they should be nice to people, including their family members, rather than pit them against one another. Another Christmas tradition from A Christmas Carol to The Grinch.
Violent Night combines familiar protagonist archetypes from different sorts of action movies through an individual who is both an unlikely hero – Santa is seldom depicted as capable of gruesome violence – and has been pulled back into the game. It’s also a film that angles its camera, composes its music, and cues its lights and sound to draw humor from violence that could, in other circumstances, be traumatic.
There are no particularly memorable performances, but no special duds either. Harbour is a capable performer and I’d probably watch various riffs of smart, funny bear-man beats up people exhaustedly. Leguizamo’s character is an embittered man, a criminal tactician, and a merciless killer. His origin story comes from having too little as a poor child at Christmas. The film is neither so complex as to deep dive how Santa could inadvertently perpetuates class inequality (artfully sidestepping that by Santa (1) not understanding how his magic works and (2) bringing gifts specifically to those that need him) nor so hackneyed or self-important to expect its simple message will be mind-blowing. The art of Violent Night is in using a violent comedy to traffic in Christmas cliches, I suppose.
This could almost be the movie that Leguizamo’s character in The Menu jokes about being bad but a fun time. But I can’t imagine a guy with five Ice Age credits is sneering at or pressed by this appearance. Even if he’s just having fun, he’s having a lot of it.
My biggest complaint about Violent Night is that the funniest, most brutal kill – half on accident in execution – is so early in the movie; but, there are still some memorable ones later on.
Overall, this is a fun movie. I laughed a lot, I was never bored, there were no unforgivably dull performances or egregious lines. There are a dozen Christmas-themed movies released every yeaer. This may not be an all-time great, but it’s among the upper half. In short, while it’s not National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or It’s A Wonderful Life, I’d be happy to have it in my holiday movie rotation.