{"id":126371,"date":"2022-12-01T07:50:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T07:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=126371"},"modified":"2022-12-01T07:50:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T07:50:26","slug":"violent-night-review-david-harbour-is-having-a-blast-as-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/cinema\/violent-night-review-david-harbour-is-having-a-blast-as-santa\/","title":{"rendered":"Violent Night Review: David Harbour is having a blast as Santa!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s an opening gambit in <em><strong>Scrooged<\/strong><\/em> where a promo attempting to entice a new Christmas audience with a super violent movie starring Lee Majors plays out. It\u2019s called &#8216;The Night the Reindeer Died&#8217; and is a hilarious parody which has much in common with <em><strong>Violent Night<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>David Harbour (<em><strong>Stranger Things<\/strong><\/em>) stars as a disgruntled Santa in Tommy Wirkola\u2019s ode to the Christmas film which pays homage to many a festive piece, including <em><strong>National Lampoon\u2019s Christmas Vacation, Bad Santa<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Die Hard<\/strong><\/em> to name a few.<\/p>\n<p>Harbour is on fine form as a grumpy, alcoholic who has nearly lost all faith in humanity. His line delivery is spot on and often hilarious. On entering the mansion of a wealthy family celebrating Christmas together, he guzzles down a bottle of their most expensive booze and passes out, waking up to a home invasion by a gang of thieves intent on taking down the corrupt elite and stealing their money. It\u2019s up to him to save the day. John Leguizamo stars as the man in charge of the heist. His code-name is Scrooge and he hates the festive period \u2013 even the villains get a backstory!<\/p>\n<p>Beverly D&#8217;Angelo plays the rich and ruthless matriarch, her two adult children Alva (Edi Patterson who gets some great one-liners) and Jason (Alex Hassell) each toying with her affection for very different reasons.\u00a0 Jason is estranged from his wife Linda (Alexis Louder) and daughter Trudy (Leah Brady) but they have come together for the sake of keeping up appearances, and for Jason\u2019s last-ditch attempt to win them back.<\/p>\n<p>As is the norm with Christmas films, some of the characters learn valuable lessons, albeit in an amusing and brutal way \u2013 one scene featuring Bryan Adams\u2019 Christmas Time is particularly gleeful. There\u2019s a little more to the film than expected, as it goes its own way in terms of mythology, but it all wraps up a bit too neatly and is somewhat formulaic. Still, there\u2019s lots of jolly fun along the way.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Violent Night will be in cinemas on 2 December 2022. Find more reviews at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/type\/quote\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SciFiNow<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Harbour is a disgruntled Santa in Tommy Wirkola\u2019s Violent Night. Our review&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":125864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Entertainment","MSN_Publish_Option":true,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Screenshot-2022-10-07-at-13.26.06.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126384,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126371\/revisions\/126384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}