'Violent Night' is (as seemingly every review will tell you) composed of used parts from other Christmas movies, principly 'Bad Santa' (1 & 2), 'Die Hard' (1 & 2) and 'Home Alone' (1 & 2). It is the story of a disillusioned real life Santa Claus (David Harbour) reluctantly come to the rescue of a dysfunctional wealthy family, when they are held hostage by John Leguizamo and his band of crooks on Christmas Eve. So the question is can this Frankenstein monster of a Christmas movie come to life, can it walk on its own? Would you settle for drunkenly stumble?
Less then the total of its parts 'Violent Night' is successfully there. It is a real, mostly coherent movie. It's uneven and as you might expect it's tone is all over the place. The movie contains a few interesting ideas (principly Santa's backstory), and is anchored by a sweet relationship between Santa and a little girl (Leah Brady) who still believes in him even when he doubts himself. This movie really delivers on the violence however so be aware of that going in. You will see characters killed in ways you've never seen characters killed before.
This cliched assembliage, boasts a couple pretty good action sequences, and one or two clever or somewhat heartwarming moments, but everything in it has been done better before, multiple times. It was nice to see Beverly D'Angelo again though. **
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