John Woo, the action filmmaker that just about every other action film or even parodies of every other action film over the past forty years owes some artistic debt to, has returned to Hollywood. While his work State-side never really managed to reach the artistic heights of his heyday, as memetic as films like Face/Off and even Mission: Impossible 2 have become, I’m still calling this a moment of potential celebration because… well, it makes the most sense why 2023 would be the year that he would come back. In the same time frame that John Wick, a franchise that simply wouldn’t exist without John Woo’s iconic approach to action thrills, reached its creative apex with Chapter 4, getting more of that grandeur direct from the source is quite the offer.
Even in the realm of Christmas-set action films, which have thrived on high concept premises for the longest time, the concept here is more novel than most. It involves grieving parent Brian (Joel Kinnaman) who, after losing both his son and his vocal cords to gang war casualty, goes on a vengeful war path against every single gang member involved with the tragedy. Aside from some stray moments of dialogue from background actors or radio announcers marking the passage of time in-story, the story is delivered without human speech. It’s the kind of gimmick that relies on a highly capable lead actor to make it work, requiring someone who not only can sell their cred as an action lead, but also deliver all the requisite emotion and drama just through their facial expressions and body language.
Kinnaman has his sticking points with getting across that emotionality, as his facial expressions make it look like he’s actively struggling to be as intense as the script requires him to, but he still makes an impact with his depiction of grief and self-destruction. He really gets across the level of isolation he’s dealing with, between his diminished social interaction (something Kinnaman himself mimicked on-set) and the ache of losing his child in such a violent fashion. However, his real strong suit here is how well he sells the psychological damage inherent to someone this devoted to wreaking bloody vengeance against cartel goons.
The film’s overall tone, thankfully, avoids the power entitlement that a lot of Woo-imitators lean into in order to justify their lead’s bloodlust (like the familial revenge fantasy of Peppermint), and instead leans into how truly fucked-up a person that would actually do this would have to be. It reminded me of Garth Ennis’ work on the Punisher comics, where that singular, obsessive focus with wiping out criminals is treated as the result of a void where a heart should be. Instead of just pushing forward with his still-living wife (Catalina Sandino Moreno), he shuts himself away and meticulously plans his warpath, and getting himself in shape to follow it, because he can’t find it in himself to live with what he’s lost. It’s suitably tragic, which helps balance out the frankly-tired one-note depiction of Mexican gangsters; for a storyteller whose best work involved humanising and even ennobling the criminal element, it feels out-of-place in a John Woo joint.
The presentation here is all killer, though. It doesn’t rely on the more recognisable Woo-isms (not a dove in sight), but Woo’s direction and DP Sharone Meir’s photography show ample creativity, like with the shots reflected off of Christmas baubles and even a Newton’s cradle. Marco Beltrami’s soundtrack does a lot of the heavy lifting on the emotional side of things, adding plentiful melodrama through the strings and piano sections which make up for some of the dips in Kinnaman’s delivery. Then there’s the action itself, which is rough and dirty in all the best ways. The bloodspray is well-placed, the choreography is excellent, and that stairwell one-er is pretty sweet.
In the larger canon of John Woo’s action cinema, this isn’t likely to blow anyone away. It’s rather simplistic, both in its treatment of its central gimmick and its portrayal of vigilantism in general, and while Joel Kinnaman does adequately in the lead, there’s still a feeling that this could have been elevated so much further with a better actor. No shade on Kinnaman, I’ll defend his work on both Suicide Squad movies all day long, but he wasn’t quite the right fit for this. But despite that, it still delivers solid emotional drama and exciting bloodshed, and makes for a decent vibe check for modern vigilante action flicks. Even with its missteps, I’ll take this over Peppermint or the Death Wish remake any day.
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