TixMas Eve Is Here! 2022: Violent Night (Just the Ticket #119)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The TixMaster

Merry Christmas Eve, and welcome to my four hundredth post on this blog!

I'd also like to apologize for the change in content of tonight's post. Much like how Adrian Monk refers to his OCD, it's been both a gift...and a curse for the Countdown to TixMas, and for myself.
It's been a gift because I have been struggling for several days as to the best way to review The Retaliators and its soundtrack without spoiling one or the other or deflating the significance of my chosen Christmas Day review, and now, I don't have to.
But it's been a curse because I planned and scheduled what I would review each day of the special so that I could draft and edit some of my posts in advance, all based on my not being able to review Violent Night. Then, on the twenty-second, Violent Night became available on streaming, and I had to rethink my schedule, which gave me an extra review to write from scratch (now five such reviews in the Countdown, instead of four, not counting the Dragon Ball What If? part that I also wrote from scratch this week). So forgive me if I'm not keen to compose introductory poetry today.

My reviews of The Retaliators and its soundtrack will now be combined into one post for an extra-special, Christmas Day release. And as the title suggests, today, I am reviewing Violent Night!

So like and comment, beware spoilers, and let's go.

Stop me if you've heard this before: Violent Night is about a disgruntled Santa Claus using his powers and long-honed skills to fend off a heavily armed villain with a personal grudge against him.

And stop me if you've heard this one: a mysterious and unwitting hero must go it alone (except for someone he keeps in contact with via a stolen walkie-talkie) when he is trapped in a building with a group of heavily-armed villains who are trying to steal money from a highly secure vault.

And stop me if you've heard this one: when her home is invaded by thieves, a mature-minded child with sociopathic tendencies sets up improvised booby traps to ward them off until an old man with a white beard comes along and bludgeons them with a blunt tool.

And stop me if you've heard this one: child of separated parents makes a wish on Christmas to get them back together.

And finally, stop me if you've heard the one about the super-powered, nigh-unkillable guy in a red suit who cracks jokes and brutally murders mercenaries on Christmas.

Yeah, Violent Night has a similar conceit to Fatman, and borrows heavily from Die Hard, Home Alone, Once Upon A Deadpool, and half of all existing Hallmark movie plots to make something...not as good as most of that sounds.

That Santa here is bored and disillusioned by the greed and sameness of Christmas, yet is drawn to the richest, greediest, assholiest--sorry; anusiest (I wouldn't want to get on the Naughty List this year)--family in America makes little sense, as do the last-minute personality changes of the family themselves. I mean, I'm glad they learned at some indeterminate time that Christmas is good, earning hundreds of millions through warmongering is bad, they suck as human beings, and Santa is real. But it felt less like a lesson learned than someone in the writers' room going, "oh, shit! Hey, Mike? I wrote Santa dead; what do I do now?"

Mike looks up Santa lore on Wikipedia. "Just have a bunch of people believe in hin, or something!"

"But I also wrote everyone as an asshole; that isn't going to work!"

"I don't care; I'm late for earlobe yoga! Have it done and on my desk by Smarch or you're fired!"

Also, you'd think that a faith-powered supernatural entity who can be anywhere at any time and has access to every gift imaginable would dispatch his foes in more creative ways, like something out of Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Instead, we get an ex-viking warlord who can't get his pixie booger teleporter to work and spends most of the film crushing skulls with a sledgehammer because after eleven hundred years of Santa duty, he still doesn't understand how Christmas Magic works. Yeah, prepare to hear David Harbour say, "Christmas Magic; I still don't really understand how it works" a lot in this movie. It's annoying.

If there's any saving grace to this besides David Harbour playing Santa, it's John Leguizamo as the lead villain. He was woefully typecast in the 90s and early 2000s as "Hispanic junkie," and is a much better actor than that long string of roles would suggest. He's a bit campy here (perfect for the tone that Violent Night is trying to go for), but Leguizamo is a menacing and legitimate threat that makes you think his character could literally kill Christmas. The fight between his "Mr. Scrooge" and Harbour's Santa near the end is much more vicious, better choreographed, and creative than yesterday's Fatman/Skinny Man climax, too.

Speaking of legitimate, though, I will admit that the Home Alone-inspired sequence at the late-midpoint got legitimate laughs out of me, and I enjoyed the cringe humor way more than I expected to.

So despite the heavily derivative plot, the too-safe, same-y kills, and the convenience-based character writing, this was a fun watch. Not the "fucking perfect, best idea for a movie that anyone has ever had for a movie" where Santa "kills the ever-loving shit out of the bad guys with his Christmas powers" masterpiece that I expected, but fun. And that definitely makes it better than Fatman.

B-

Stay Tuned, wait smart, and save those Ticket Stubs because tomorrow, for real this time, I'm going to review The Retaliators, and Bring Back the Soundtrack!

Merry Christmas,

and TixMaster,

Out.