Quick Holiday Reviews: Violent Night (2022)

 A festive night of murder, revenge and Santa Claus.

Yippee ki yay Father Christmas.

Santa is drunk and depressed.
He's lost his Christmas spirit.

Aw.

Meanwhile, a bunch of awful people- and our Heroes- are celebrating Christmas together.

What could go wrong?

Well, a bunch of bad guys break in, kill the guards and threaten to kill everyone if they don't turn over a bunch of money.

They need to break into the Vault.  Really?

Our Santa shows up and gets stranded, when his reindeer fly off.

Can he stop the bad guys?

Santa must remember his past experience as a fighter and be motivated to save everyone.

Is he up to the task?
Will they just gut his bowel full of jelly?

To find out, stream the Film now.

A fun, frenetic and violent Film...with heart.  In spite of the marketing of 'Santa Claus kills bad guys,' there's quite a few good morals and lessons here.

I know- I was surprised too.

The Film is a love letter to Christmas Films of the past- specifically the Die Hard Films.  The Plot structure is a pretty naked homage to the first Film, but there's more to it than just that. 
There's fighting in the snow and a Plot Point involving 'help' that isn't too helpful that's right out of Die Hard 2: Die Harder. 
Throw in the 'too drunk to care' at first Santa and you've got Die Hard 3's John McClane right there.  And yes, that is NOT a Christmas Film.  I guess they were just on a roll.

There's always a fun subplot that is setup nicely involving the kid watching Home Alone and being inspired by it.  The results are, well, different.  No SPOILERS.

Harbour is great here as Santa, getting a full Arc and more backstory than I was expecting here.  He learns many lessons AND gets to kill bad guys with a giant hammer.  Ho ho wholesome.

The Film wisely spends enough time on the terrible family members and no more, which is good.  It would be easy to linger on them too long and we ain't got time for that!

If you're a fan of good, visceral action a la John Wick Films, check this one out.  It still takes short breaks for Plot and Character, which is nice.  The Plot won't win any writing awards, but it gets everyone nicely from Point A to Point B with enough characterization to make it worth it.

Now this one is definitely not for the kiddies, so maybe just do the Lego Playset Version instead.

I'm not the most festive guy out there, but the Movie can 'get you in the feels.'  Just know that it does so between bad guys meeting violent (and justifiable) ends.