For It Is Man's Number: alexis louder

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Thursday, 22 December 2022

Violent Night (2022)

Take a good handful of Bad Santa, add some Home Alone, and then mix in an overflowing bowl full of Die Hard (as well as Die Hard 2: Die Harder) and you get Violent Night. If that sounds like a great time at the movies for you, and I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t, then you are bound to enjoy this. Maybe not from the first scenes though.

David Harbour plays Santa Claus. Not someone who thinks they are Santa Claus. Not a Santa Claus wannabe. He IS the man in the big red suit. He even has the reindeer, the magic to get up and down chimneys, a a sack that magically fills with gifts for children. And, of course, the infamous “naughty or nice” list. He’s grown jaded though, so many kids nowadays just seem to want videogames or cash for Christmas. Young Trudy (Leah Brady) is a rare exception. All she wants for Christmas is for her parents (Jason, played by Alex Hassell, and Linda, played by Alexis Louder) to repair their relationship. Jason is working on that, but it may involve finally standing up to his rich and powerful mother (Gertrude, played by Beverly D’Angelo). Gertrude is so rich and powerful that the planned family Christmas gathering is interrupted by a group of armed robbers (headed up by John Leguizamo’s “Scrooge”) who plan an efficient and ruthless redistribution of her millions. They didn’t account for one thing though. Santa Claus is in the house, and he’s about to go to town on all of them.

Director Tommy Wirkola has been delivering excellent movies now for some time, and many horror fans have been a fan of his work since the wonderfully bonkers Dead Snow movies, so it’s no surprise to find that this is funny and gory throughout. That is what Wirkola does so well. What is a bit of a surprise, although he has some experience in the genre, is just how good the action beats are. This is a film that stays perfectly balanced between the fantastical and bone-breaking reality. The cast all nail the tone of the whole thing, and they’re helped by a script that improves greatly once you realise that it’s not being coy about the central concept.

Writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller previously served up the Sonic movies (as well as sharpening their candy canes with 12 Deadly Days for TV), and they grow in confidence once they have set everyone and everything in place. The first scenes featuring Harbour felt a bit odd to me, as I wasn’t entirely sure how we were meant to view his interpretation of Santa, but things then move along nicely, with sharp dialogue and plot construction, to get us all where we want to be . . . watching a film that is pleasingly unabashed about it being a Santa-centric Die Hard. The references and gags come thick and fast, and the fights are well-staged and impressively creative, but nothing is done in a way that feels too smug or self-indulgent.

Harbour is a surprisingly brilliant Santa, allowed to be sweet and loving one minute, capable of deadly violence the next. He doesn’t look ripped, but certainly looks capable of handling himself (especially when he has the right weapon to hand). Leguizamo is just as brilliant as the main villain, able to be the standard baddie that we need, but also able to deliver a standard Christmas movie tale of seasonal tragedy with a straight face that stops that moment being as ridiculous as it could be. Brady is a sweet youngster, and gets more involved in the action while the third act plays out, Hassell and Louder are decent, D’Angelo is a canny bit of casting, of course, and the other person I need to mention is Cam Gigandet, comfortably giving me the best Mark Wahlberg parody since Andy Samberg (no accent, but it’s obvious from his very first line that he’s definitely written as “a Mark Wahlberg” type). Edi Patterson is also fun, playing the scheming sister of Hassell’s character, and there is fun to be had with the variety of evil henchmen, including a sociopath played by Brendan Fletcher and the oblivous-of-the-pain-they-have-coming characters played by André Eriksen and Mitra Suri.

You also get a score and soundtrack that works perfectly alongside the blood-spattered snowy visuals, and some super-cheesy one-liners that work because, well, you just have to admire the commitment to the concept. I am not sure if people will view this as a new holiday classic, but I know some might. I will certainly be aiming to add it to the roster of other films I like to watch during this time of year.

8/10

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Tuesday, 9 November 2021

Noir-vember: Copshop (2021)

Director Joe Carnahan, who co-wrote this with Kurt McLeod, likes a certain kind of movie. They usually feature macho males. There’s a lot of violence. There’s plenty of dark humour. And he isn’t afraid to wallow in the classic crime movie tropes we have seen hundreds of times before. Copshop is absolutely in line with so many of his other movies, yet it somehow lacks that Carnahan touch that have made his other movies so enjoyable.

Alexis Louder plays a law enforcement officer named Valerie Young, about to have a busy night at her police station thanks to some guy who hit her during a call to a disturbance. That guy is Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo), and he has had himself arrested deliberately, thinking a cell will be the safest place for him. Because there’s a price on his head. Some time later, Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler) is placed in a cell, caught in a flagrant DUI incident. But Bob isn’t actually drunk. He is there for Teddy. As if that wasn’t problematic enough for everyone in the station, Anthony Lamb (Toby Huss) is also after Teddy. And Anthony Lamb isn’t bothered by the idea of killing anyone else who might get in his way. Caught up in this crazy scenario, Valerie has to decide who she can count on to help her survive the night.

The character of Valerie may be the lead here, but the main pull is Butler, a killer with a moral code. He is the one you end up rooting for, because Teddy seems to be a scumbag who has run away from his responsibilities and Anthony Lamb is an absolute (hilarious) psycho. I think that’s the problem though, the fact that the film doesn’t decide to stick alongside Butler’s character from start to finish. That was the obvious through line, but we get a lot of set-up in the first act and too many scenes lacking his charisma and energy.

Louder is fine in her role, delivering dialogue and moments that foreshadow what viewers can sense coming along in the third act. She’s easy to like, and easy to root for. Her biggest problem is just the fact that she isn’t Butler, who swaggers through every scene that he steals. Grillo is stuck playing someone who is too difficult to like or trust, so it’s not one of his best roles. Huss, on the other hand, raises things up when his character crashes into the film and starts killing off everyone else around him.

Carnahan usually does well by reworking classic movie moments within his stylish and self-aware brand of cheery nihilism, but it doesn’t work as well here. The action beats aren’t as satisfying, the dialogue isn’t as clever as it should be, and the whole thing fizzles when it should spark and crackle. With a different cast this would have been almost unwatchable. As it is, it’s one that you can convince yourself was worth a chunk of your evening, even as you try to swallow and destroy that small, heavy ball of disappointment that settles in your stomach.

It’s sadly just not much cop.

5/10