Violent Night

Tommy Wirkola directs a rather different festive film penned by Pat Casey and Josh Miller. David Harbour is Santa, who we find in a bar in Bristol questioning his relevance in the modern world and whether Christmas has a future. In Connecticut the mega rich Lightstone family are getting together at matriarch Gertrude’s (Beverly D’Angelo) palatial home. Jason (Alex Hassell), his estranged wife Linda (Alexis Louder) and their daughter Trudy (Leah Brady) are joined by sister Alva (Edi Patterson), her partner Morgan (Cam Gigandent) and her son Bert (Alexander Elliott). Family relationships are strained but become even more strained when a gang led by Scrooge (John Leguizamo) raid the family home and take them hostages. However when Santa, while indulging in the milk and cookies left for him, stumbles over the raid he brings more than coal from the gang who are very much on his naughty list.

Violent Night feels like what happens when you put together a bunch of movie execs and ask them to come up the most nuts Christmas film you can think of.

It is fun. But perhaps not as much fun as it could have been. It makes plenty of reference to festive favourites with not so much nods too as blatant theft of scenes from Die Hard and Home Alone and a little bizarrely it feels like The Northman as well! We have a disgruntled Santa, the spoilt rich and of course the child who believes in the magic of Santa a belief that will save the day.

The raw ingredients are there, but it also suffers from an odd pacing problem for a film of this type. While there are some fun and satisfying set pieces they do take a while to get there. There is a nice balance between action film quips and some rather nice Christmas pathos as Trudy reminds Santa of the magic of Christmas. But those moments are a bit sparse.

Violent Night is the most nuts Christmas film you’ll see this year and in David Harbour you have an enjoyable world weary Santa. But it does move much slower than it should and falls a little short of the sum of its parts. More Ho Ho Hum than Ho Ho Ho.