Violent Night

One of the cleverest jokes in "Scrooged," the in some cases uneven but unfathomably underrated 1988 Charge Murray riff on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, came right at the start of a fake special trailer. Titled "The Night the Reindeer Kicked the Bucket," it was a cheerfully corny bit of occasional carnage in which fear mongers endeavor to seize the North Shaft until Lee Majors spares the day by gunning down the aggressors, whereas the fellow within the ruddy suit guarantees him he is being a great boy this year. As a refining of the cowardly lengths that arrange tv software engineers go to pull in watchers amid the Yuletide season—in this case, by taking a made-for-TV knockoff of the commonplace Chuck Norris vehicle of that time and roughly slapping a thick regular coat on the tip—it was in fact a one-joke introduction. But it happened to be a beautiful amusing joke, and since it kept going for almost two minutes, it was over some time recently it might start to wear out its welcome.

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Presently comes "Savage Night," a film that appears to have been outlined by scholars Pat Casey and Josh Mill operator and chief Tommy Wirkola to reply the address of what a full-length adaptation of "The Night the Reindeer Passed on" might have been like, expanded by over-the-top carnage that would have been incomprehensible on tv back at that point. The result, perhaps obviously, may be a to a great extent repetitive cinematic knot of coal that unsuccessfully tries to extend its one-joke preface out to 101 minutes in a tonally uneven endeavor to position itself as a modern elective occasion classic. Instep, "Rough Night" is approximately as entertaining as tuning in to individuals contend approximately whether "Kick the bucket Difficult" may be a Christmas motion picture or not (it isn't, FYI) whereas more or less squandering a really committed execution from David Harbor as the Man in Ruddy himself.

The Supremely Rich, Powerful, And Dysfunctional Lightstone Family

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As the film opens, the remarkably wealthy, effective, and broken Lightstone family has assembled at the enormous compound having a place to matron Gertrude (Beverly D'Angelo) to celebrate, to utilize the term indiscriminately, the occasions. Whereas her detestable girl Alva (Edi Patterson), her similarly scornful child Bertrude (Alexander Elliot)—not a typo—and her moron performing artist boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) obtrusively curry her favor and her child Jason (Alex Hassell) and his repelled spouse Linda (Alexis Louder) are attempting to work through their issues, as it were Jason's cute moppet girl Trudy (Leah Brady) still appears willing to grasp the occasion soul. But, some time recently long, the familial double-crossing is supplanted by gunfire when a gather of rough hoodlums driven by a fellow nicknamed Tightwad (John Leguizamo) arrive to take $300 million they accept has been nefariously obtained by Gertrude and socked absent in a hypothetically invulnerable secure.

While all of this is going on, Santa—depicted here as filled with equal parts booze and self-loathing and contemplating packing in his holiday duties for good after one final run—happens to be in the house and winds up getting trapped inside when his reindeer take off during the initial mayhem. Although his first instinct is to flee, he realizes that Trudy is one of the stars of his nice list. He decides to pull himself together and rescue her, utilizing the skills for dispensing savage violence that he cultivated in his pre-Santa days, leading to several scenes in which he gruesomely dispatches the various bad guys using everything from a sledgehammer to a snow blower to a Christmas star tree topper jabbed into someone's eyeball. For her part, Trudy uses her skills to build booby traps that she developed from watching "Home Alone" to fending off the attackers in equally gruesome ways.

"Violent Night" is primarily comprised of bits and pieces borrowed from other holiday films of recent vintage. Most obviously, it intends to be some kind of hybrid of the aforementioned "Die Hard" and "Home Alone." The drunken, foul-mouthed and cynical version of Santa depicted here, who we see projectile vomiting on a hapless victim while flying off in his sleigh during the pre-credit opening sequence, will no doubt inspire memories of Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa." The dysfunctional family gathering interrupted by criminals is straight out of "The Ref." The presence of D'Angelo serves as a living reminder of "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," though her part is a 180-degree turn from the warm and loving mother she played there. Hell, even the conceit of Santa fighting off bad guys in bloody fashion was done a couple of years ago in the weirdo project "Fatman," in which Mel Gibson's version of Santa fights off an assassin hired by a monstrously entitled brat who objected to receiving a lump of coal.

The problem with "Violent Night" is not its unoriginal premise but how little is done with it.

The problem with "Violent Night" is not its unoriginal premise but how little is done about it. Santa violently dispatching bad guys is a one-joke premise that could have developed into something interesting, perhaps using gruesome physical violence as a way of commenting on the emotional brutality that holiday classics like "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life" traffic in. Instead, Wirkola is content to stick with the same joke of Santa killing bad guys in grotesque ways (and this is an undeniably hard-R film) that quickly grows tiresome. Even that might have worked on some fundamental level as a gory black comedy, but then the film ineptly tries for sentiment towards the end by asking us to care about the fates of the most hateful family members. "Violent Night" also seems weirdly reticent to fully exploit the notion that it's Santa Claus doling out the violence—there's only one point where he fully utilizes his unique powers against one of the attackers and, perhaps inevitably, it's the only kill that sticks in the mind afterward.

The one saving grace of "Violent Night" is Harbour's performance. Like the rest of the film, his character is basically a joke, but one he commits to impressively throughout, whether knocking off new additions to his naughty list or communicating with Trudy over walkie-talkies. Granted, he may not replace Edmund Gwenn as the ideal movie Santa anytime soon, but his work here is the one sweet plum in the middle of an otherwise rancid cinematic pudding.