From left: David Harbour as Santa and John Leguizamo as Scrooge.Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures
- Violent Night
- Directed by Tommy Wirkola
- Written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller
- Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo and Beverly D’Angelo
- Classification R; 112 minutes
- Opens in theatres Dec. 2
Violent Night is here to reward your tried-and-true insistence that Die Hard is … wait for it … a Christmas movie! We’ve been agreeing on this point for decades. Anyone who still finds novelty in making the argument may very well appreciate Violent Night, which lazily rehashes the beats from the 1988 holiday classic starring Bruce Willis as the detective saving Christmas from a hostage crisis.
The hook here is that instead of a disgruntled cop in the wrong place at the wrong time, Violent Night’s hero is Santa. Not like a mall Santa, but the real one, so to speak. He has a bottomless sack filled with gifts, reindeer that drop deuces on rooftops, the magical ability to float up and down chimneys by blowing his nose and a convoluted back story that explains why he’s so good at smashing skulls when needed. He is at the right place (placing gifts by the tree) at the right time (on Christmas Eve) when baddies take over the festivities.
We don’t get to hear John McClane’s iconic mic drop “yippee-kiyay …” Instead we get David Harbour’s Kris Kringle muttering with a straight face, “Santa Claus is coming to town.”
Harbour is a hulking actor who could have easily been cast as one of Hans Gruber’s henchmen. He plays Santa with the same grouch-on-the-outside/softie-on-the-inside schtick he’s been doing since Stranger Things made him a household name. We saw this performance in his take on Hellboy and the Russian sideshow superhero he played in Black Widow, not to mention Stranger Things seasons two, three and four. There’s a reason his character Jim Hopper’s plotline was the biggest drag on the bloated last season.
Not that Harbour is the reason that Violent Night lands like a lump of coal. He does what he can in a witless movie that is too easily satisfied with its own premise and often feels like it’s elbowing you in the ribs trying to get you to laugh along with it.
From left: Jason (Alex Hassell), Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo), Alva (Edi Patterson), Linda (Alexis Louder), Trudy (Leah Brady) and Santa.Allen Fraser / Universal Pictures/Universal Pictures
We meet Harbour’s Santa getting hammered at a local pub on Christmas Eve. He’s dreading having to spend the night shipping gifts to greedy children on his list. And he can’t hold down his alcohol, though that won’t hinder him later in the evening when bludgeoning villains with a sledgehammer.
How Santa crosses paths with dozens of armed hostage-taking mercenaries during his cozy house calls takes some ‘splaining. He’s dropping off gifts for an adorable little girl on his nice list named Trudy (Leah Brady), and also helping himself to milk, cookies and the top-shelf brandy sitting above grandma’s fireplace. Trudy’s visiting her grandma’s heavily fortified mansion for Christmas. Grandma is played by Beverly D’Angelo, a welcome wink to fans of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. She’s also a shady government contractor who moves cash meant for black ops through her personal vault.
Enter John Leguizamo as … I kid you not … Scrooge, the Christmas-hating mercenary leading the heist on grandma’s high-tech vault to grab the $300-million he expects to find inside. Leguizamo, for his part, is among the few people here who knows what kind of movie he’s in. He gives this Scrooge an over-the-top “bah humbug” zeal as if playing to the child audience Violent Night clearly feels written for, never mind the heavy artillery and gross bodily harm.
This is still a Santa Clause movie, R-rated but with a PG-mindset, written by the guys behind two Sonic the Hedgehog movies. They’re not just riffing on Die Hard and its sequel Die Harder here, but also Home Alone, which is essentially Die Hard for kids. So whenever Santa impales someone with a candy cane or gouges out an eyeball with a Christmas ornament, the mood here is adolescent giddiness, as if all Violent Night wants is to earn a spot on the naughty list.
Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures