{"id":56350,"date":"2022-12-05T18:21:37","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T23:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=56350"},"modified":"2022-12-05T18:21:58","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T23:21:58","slug":"violent-night-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/12\/violent-night-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Violent Night \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            \u201cViolent Night\u201d doesn\u2019t have it in itself to be the best naughty Christmas movie ever made, so it tries to compensate by being every naughty Christmas movie ever made. Drunken, bitter Santa (played here by David Harbour)? That\u2019s been done before, let\u2019s say most notably by 2003\u2019s \u201cBad Santa.\u201d Murderous thieves taking hostages at Christmastime? 1988\u2019s \u201cDie Hard\u201d and its many knockoffs. Kids setting bone-breaking makeshift booby traps for bad guys? 1990\u2019s \u201cHome Alone\u201d (which yes, counts as a naughty Christmas movie, even if it was ostensibly for kids). Family hammering out drama during a hostage situation? 1994\u2019s very funny Denis Leary comedy \u201cThe Ref.\u201d Beverly D\u2019Angelo? 1989\u2019s \u201cNational Lampoon\u2019s Christmas Vacation.\u201d Even the whole idea of Santa Claus as an R-rated action movie hero was done better in 2020\u2019s \u201cFatman.\u201d \u201cViolent Night\u201d doesn\u2019t pretend that it doesn\u2019t owe much to its predecessors (it even checks \u201cHome Alone\u201d by name), but it wants you to believe that it\u2019s somehow more than the sum of its parts. It isn\u2019t, though there are some laughs to be had along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Harbour\u2019s Santa falls asleep from whisky and cookies while visiting the mansion of the wealthy Lightstone family. He awakens to learn that all the family\u2019s servants and security have been killed and the family itself has been taken hostage by a team led by Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo), who is there to steal $300 million from matriarch Gertrude (D\u2019Angelo). Worse, his reindeer have flown off, leaving him unable to make a getaway, and the bad guys are going from room to room, looking for expendables to eliminate. He tries to escape anyway, but then notices that youngest granddaughter Trudy (Leah Brady) is on the Nice list. She might be one of the Nicest kids in the world. Santa\u2019s got his tell-all list, a sack of unending gifts, a history as a bloodthirsty Viking, and a few other goodies thanks to Christmas magic. He decides to stay and save the Lightstones\u2019 lives as a Christmas present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            This sure as sugar cookies means violence toward the Naughty villains. Every Christmas-themed weapon imaginable is in play here: from icicles to tree ornaments to sharpened candy canes to snowblowers. And it\u2019s not just Santa doing the killing, the Lightstone family members find it within themselves to fight back, even sweet little Trudy. The villains in this movie turn out to be infuriatingly easy opponents. They\u2019re efficient gun-toting killing machines for about two minutes and for the rest of the movie they make those classic villain mistakes of talking too much and getting into fights where they forfeit the element of surprise. At least the villains in \u201cHome Alone\u201d were consistently inept, these guys are stupid when they\u2019re supposed to be smart, which makes their stupidity all the more glaring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            That\u2019s not to say there isn\u2019t a charm to \u201cViolent Night.\u201d David Harbour is great in the role of Santa, with some memorably funny lines and readings. D\u2019Angelo is gloriously profane at times, Leguizamo sinks his teeth into the silliness, and Brady is naturally worth protecting. The action is funny and creative in small doses, but the movie gets greedy and goes on too long. It would have done well to stay in the Lightstone house instead of climaxing a snowmobile\u2019s drive away at a location that hasn\u2019t been established. There\u2019s a lot of filler here, like Santa reckoning with his past, including the dissolution of his marriage. Mrs. Claus isn\u2019t a character here, so that whole tangent is sadly pointless. That said, I\u2019d be happy to see a sequel where we meet Mrs. Claus and get more of Harbour\u2019s Santa. I\u2019d wouldn\u2019t mind spending more time with this character as long as the movie around him is tighter. I could see \u201cViolent Night\u201d doing well enough to spawn a franchise that becomes an annual tradition, even if the film misses the mark of becoming a Christmas classic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cViolent Night\u201d is rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout and some sexual references. Its running time is 112 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             \u201cViolent Night\u201d doesn\u2019t have it in itself to be the best naughty Christmas movie ever made, so it tries to compensate by being every naughty Christmas… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":56351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1968],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56353,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56350\/revisions\/56353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}