The Big Picture

Joel Kinnaman was unfazed by the lack of dialogue in Silent Night due to the opportunity to work with John Woo. He discusses why acting without dialogue required a different level of emotional preparation. Kinnaman also breaks down one of the more challenging stunt sequences of the film.

There are no Christmas carolers or jolly Santas in John Woo’s heart-pounding Silent Night. The holiday action has zero dialogue to break up the narrative and fight sequences, and the movie’s lead, For All Mankind’s Joel Kinnaman, tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub this information didn’t faze him. The moment he found out he’d be working with Woo, the script was a nonfactor.

So, how does Silent Night manage a nearly 2-hour movie with no dialogue? The premise of the film is that a father (Kinnaman) and his son (Anthony Giulietti) are playing in their yard on Christmas Eve when they’re caught in a gang’s crossfire. Tragically, the little boy doesn’t survive, and the wounds sustained by Kinnaman’s character leave him unable to speak. Also starring Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kid Cudi, Harold Torres, and from the producers of John Wick, Silent Night quickly takes a dark turn as an action-packed vengeance thriller, helmed by a genre pioneer.

In this interview, which you can watch in the video above or read in the transcript below, Kinnaman details the challenges of shooting a film with no dialogue, and how he had to adapt his approach to acting in order to pull it off. To keep the story propulsive, and under Woo’s direction, stunts became the heart of the feature, and Kinnaman shares which sequences were the toughest to shoot, the dangers of the stunts, and more.

Silent Night A grieving father enacts his long-awaited revenge against a ruthless gang on Christmas Eve. Release Date December 1, 2023 Director John Woo Cast Joel Kinnaman, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kid Cudi, Harold Torres Rating R Runtime 104 minutes Main Genre Action Writers Robert Archer Lynn

COLLIDER: What’s cooler, working with Nicolas Cage or John Woo?

JOEL KINNAMAN: Hmm. That’s quite a Face/Off. [Laughs] That’s a hard one.

Image via Paramount Pictures 

I know you’re a fan of John Woo, so I am curious, what did you pay to be in the movie?

KINNAMAN: The whole budget. I’m the sole financier of this film.

Working With John Woo
But for real, though, I know you’re a movie fan, I know you’re an action fan. What does it actually mean to you to work with someone like John? For me, this is my first time getting to talk to him today. I couldn’t believe I was talking to him.

KINNAMAN: I know. It was a bit of a dream come true. I had this conversation with Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, the producers of John Wick. We’d just done The Informer, and we all really wanted to find something new, and Basil was like, “Well, look, I’ve got this film. John Woo wants to come back.” I was like, “What?” And he’s like, “It’s a film that doesn’t have any dialogue.” I was like, “Okay… I don’t need to read that. I’m in.” [Laughs]

Obviously, there’s no dialogue; you don’t speak in the film. As an actor, this is a pretty big part of a performance. For you, what is it like on set where you’re emoting just through your eyes and your facial expressions?

KINNAMAN: I had some friends that were joking around, and they were like, “Oh, great. Now we can get to hang out while we’re shooting because you’re not gonna have to go home and learn your lines.” And I was like, “I don’t think it’s gonna be easier.” And I realized really quickly that it was a lot more demanding. Usually the text sort of anchors you in the scene, but it also helps propel the emotions. It’s really a crutch to sort of get emotionally into the scenes. And also, of course, it helps you tell the story of the scene because you’re saying things. So, I really quickly realized that I needed a different level of emotional preparation before each take. Also, because the whole narrative here is so driven by this man’s inner rage and the sadness and his fire and hatred, I really needed to engage all that for every take. It was very demanding.

Preparing for ‘Silent Night’s Stunts

When you were looking at the schedule and what you had to accomplish with what you had, what was the day you had circled in terms of, “This is going to be a real pain in the ass,” or, “I cannot wait to film this?”

KINNAMAN: I think I felt both of those things for most of the days. [Laughs] I knew when we were going to shoot the stair sequence that that was going to be really rough. It’s also in Mexico City, so it’s at elevation, so running upstairs is about twice as tough there. The first time we did it, I was like, “I thought I was in good shape, but I’m destroyed.” So that was a really heavy, tough, just physical sequence.

Also, we were shooting in some weird location, some old parking lot building that was semi-torn down or never finished to get built. When we were scouting it, all of a sudden you were like, “Oh, that’s like a 90-foot drop, so maybe we should put a little sign here.” And there was a big metal thing just sticking out that, you know, could be someone’s eye that disappears. So, there was a lot of work in just making it into an environment where we wouldn’t die going through with the film. A lot of the stunt team was doing some pretty tough stair falls in narrow staircases and falling 15/20 feet. A little bit too much to the left and you bang your head after a 20-foot fall, and it’s not a good day.

Silent Night is in theaters on December 1 in the U.S. You can purchase tickets here.