In short: Violent Night (2022)

Santa Claus (David Harbour), in a somewhat bitter and cynical mood as apparently absolutely everybody is these days, runs into a spot of bother when doing his gifting biz in the “compound” of a stinking rich family. For a guy who likes Christmas-themed codenames (clearly for ironic reasons, because he’s that kind of asshole) and goes by Mr Scrooge himself (John Leguizamo) has chosen Christmas Eve for heisting the hidden millions of the family with his gang. Turns out Santa has quite a bit of combat experience from his time as a Norse raider, and properly motivated by the mandatory little girl (Leah Brady) who really really believes in the spirit of the season, he’ll go Bruce Willis on quite a few people. The resulting combination of brutal violence and speeches about the spirit of Christmas are apparently the ideal way to bring a family of rich nogoodniks back together as well as renewing our hero’s belief in his role.

Yup, Violent Night as directed by Tommy Wirkola and written be Pat Casey and Josh Miller is indeed a conscious attempt at getting back to the old “Die Hard but…” formula. I’m usually pretty fond of this particular rip-off sub-genre, and it’s particularly difficult to complain about a film that goes about its work this honestly and this enthusiastically. Because that’s clearly not enough for the filmmakers, they don’t just use Old Saint Nick as their action hero, but let him bring all kinds of clichés and tropes of Christmas movies to the table Bruce Willis didn’t have to cope with. Given the contrast between the fun – and often wickedly funny – violence, you might at first think the film’s actually trying to satirize these clichés.

However, Violent Night’s treatment of childish wonder and the power of belief™ is as gratingly earnest as you’d find in any good(?) Christmas special, giving a film full of cynically funny violence a strange air of naïve earnestness. I’m not at all sure if this is the sort of thing I wanted from this particular film, but I found myself buying into its nonsense quite well while watching it, so I’m not going to complain, and instead just continue to look a bit puzzled, humming Christmas tunes in February (because that’s of course when German distributors put a Christmas movie onto streaming services).

Easier to comprehend is Wirkola’s still sure hand in staging funny violence and snarky family troubles while having things look slick as hell, as are Harbour’s and Leguizamo’s often very funny performances. The humour, pretty much a given in a film of this style, whatever style that actually is, is of course about as subtle as Santa’s hammer (it’s a whole thing), but anyone going into a Wirkola Die Hard movie about Santa expecting subtlety will be lost anyway, and will most certainly not enjoy themselves as much as I did.