John Woo movie without words
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In Russia, simultaneously with the world premiere, “Silent Fury” was released, John Woo’s first film shot in the USA after a twenty-year break. The complete absence of dialogue only benefits this brutal tale of revenge.
As a happy father (Joel Kinnaman) played with his young son in the backyard, local warring gangsters rushed by in their cars, spitting machine gun fire, just like in Hollywood action movies. One of the bullets hit the boy, and when the distraught father gave chase, he got several more. The boy died, the father survived. I took up physical training, visited a large-caliber weapons dealer, and began monitoring police frequencies. To come exactly on Christmas Eve, in strict accordance with the wall calendar, to the killers of your son. And destroy them all, every single one.
It is worth noting here that one of the shots pierced the main character’s throat, and therefore from that moment he does not utter a single word.
As, indeed, are the rest of the heroes of “Silent Fury” (in the original the film is called “Silent Night” and refers to the famous Christmas song, but one cannot help but note for once the impeccable Russian localization, referencing the great “Blind Fury” with Rutger Hauer )—everyone has filled their mouths so much, some with water, some with blood, that even in the IMDb database, in the original language column there is a capacious “None” (which, by the way, is not entirely true, since it’s either on TV or on the already mentioned police waves no, no, yes, and a complete sentence will emerge). There really isn’t much to talk about here. But there is something to see.
With Silent Fury, the great Hong Kong director John Woo returns to Hollywood after a twenty-year absence. 30 years ago, he became the first of his compatriots to move to America to breathe new life into the action genre, in which Woo at that time was the undisputed authority and recognized genius. At first everything went great. In Hard Target (1993), he meticulously injected his signature Hong Kong influences into the universe of classic B-movie action films, like those produced in industrial quantities by producer Menahem Golan and his company Cannon (the plot and even the setting of Woo’s American debut were obviously borrowed from Cannon’s textbook “Punitive Force”); in Broken Arrow (1996), he tried on the fading but still expressive nature of the big-budget action film of the 80s with explosions and helicopter battles in the spirit of Joel Silver or the Carolco studio; finally, in “Face/Off” (1997), he found himself at the forefront of the most relevant Hollywood action at that time, personified by the deafening large-caliber action films of Jerry Bruckheimer (including those starring Woo, Cage and Travolta). One can argue whether Face/Off is still an unsurpassed masterpiece of the genre or is it still a shameless kitschy farce and a swindle, but there is absolutely no doubt about it – it was the last American film by the director that could be talked about seriously. After him, Woo took part in the barbaric transformation of a self-contained spy thriller into a franchise with Tom Cruise, paid tribute to the participation of the Navajo Indians in World War II, filmed Philip K. Dick – and even though, as usual, he fired with both hands, but invariably “into the white light” like a pretty penny.” And although, as far as the “penny” is concerned, things were different – the second “Mission: Impossible” (2000) collected more than $0.5 billion at the global box office, and “Windtalkers” (2002) did not reach $100 million, — the artistic result was invariably disastrous. At some point, Wu returned to China, where he filmed mostly large-scale historical dramas, but is now returning to America without further ado. As at the very beginning of his overseas journey, Woo enlisted the support of the genre’s most relevant enthusiasts at the moment, so that the poster for Silent Fury bears a large inscription: “From the producers of John Wick.” And from the very first minutes it is clear that this is the classic John Woo, as we have loved him for so many years – even if in the entire hour and a half, white doves taking off in rapid flight never appear on the screen (but in one of the episodes a handsome parrot). However, avoiding completely hackneyed cliches, Wu does not deny the pleasure of quoting himself: I remember either the prologue of “Face Off”, or the final shootout from “Hard Target”, or something else no less relevant and significant. The film exudes genuine rather than stylized old-fashionedness. And even though there don’t seem to be any stunning, revolutionary or genre-changing scenes in Silent Fury, Wu repeatedly and more than convincingly reminds us who really dictates the rules here: in fact, it was he who filmed the best Mexican films in the world duels when the notorious “John Wick producers”, due to their youth, were not yet given his films on video rental.
As for the idea of muteness, for some reason it seems that in this case Wu did not have anything particularly conceptual in mind. He simply took advantage of the opportunity and turned his film into an homage to Jacques Tati, for whom he repeatedly confessed his love. No words only emotions.
In theaters from November 30
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