In wide release, you can still catch John Woo's new film 'Silent Rage', in which the director cares more about speaking out than staging another explosive action.

Exemplary family man Brian Godlock () is preparing to celebrate Christmas with his family. In the midst of the festivities, a brutal shootout erupts between two rival gangs in the disadvantaged neighborhood where Brian lives. A stray bullet fatally wounds Brian's young son, and the father, in shock, tries to chase the gangsters to get revenge. This pursuit predictably ends badly for him as well—Brian is severely wounded in the throat and loses his voice forever.

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After some time, the film's hero is discharged from the hospital and returns home, where everything still reminds him of his heavy loss. Brian drowns his sorrow in a bottle, does not communicate with his wife, who, by the way, tries to establish at least a normal life, if not the same as before, given everything that has befallen this decent family. Brian himself gloomily watches TV and occasionally visits the police station without results, hoping that his son's killers will be caught. But time passes, the law enforcement officers throw up their hands, and then Godlack decides to mete out justice himself, giving the criminals a year to live. Until next Christmas.

Director of cult action films John Woo has returned with a full-length American film after a long 20 years. During this time, the director, of course, did not sit idle and made nothing less than genuine big-budget blockbusters in his homeland, China (for example, the magnificent 'Red Cliff'), honing his mastery of visualization. The latter so captivated the director that in his new film 'Silent Rage', a straightforward action film of the kind Woo started his career with, he decided to bet on visual effect, eliminating all dialogue in the film. The result is something between a dark, bloody opera and a silent film from the early 20th century, but with an adjustment for today.

No, 'Silent Rage' is not completely devoid of human speech; otherwise, the modern viewer simply would not understand the film. Here, the TV occasionally mumbles, doctors speak dully, the music of Hollywood veteran Marco Beltrami builds the atmosphere, Brian's wife (Catalina Sandino Moreno) desperately tries to talk to him, but receives icy silence in return. And the loudest sounds, quite rightly, go to the main attributes of the genre—screeching tires, deafening gunfire, the clinking of glass, and the dull thud of bodies falling from great heights.

Woo's desire to tell the story primarily visually is quite understandable. In the era of 'John Wick' (made according to Woo's principles) and 'Mission: Impossible', the director needed a noticeable technique, an unconventional idea, to somehow distinguish his film from the rest. This primarily served as the starting point for the film's advertising campaign—a film without dialogue.

Otherwise, 'Silent Rage' does not deceive the expectations placed on it. That is, if a viewer goes for John Woo, they get him. Masterfully staged fights, a mad symphony of chases and shootouts, the deep drama of an inconsolable father turned into a refined killing machine between action scenes (but this time such scenes have become longer than usual—Woo does not hide the sentimentality that has come with age), and of course, the signature meticulously crafted mise-en-scènes before the upcoming clashes. What Woo always knew and practiced, maintaining a steady rhythm and avoiding unnecessary running around. Only this time, for some reason, he did without pigeons. And that seems like a bad sign.

Most of these cinematic tricks fell to the Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman, who not only had to perform some stunts himself but also constantly maintain tension on his face, displaying the necessary emotion at the right moment (the best, of course, was silent rage).

At the same time, Woo did not spare his hero at all. Brian is an ordinary working man: beer in the evenings and family gatherings by the fireplace on holidays. He has no military past or reputation as a former special agent. Godlock had to start from scratch, master all types of weapons in a short time (learning the science on YouTube), learn to drive like a stuntman, and train his body into a steel spring ready to snap at any moment. And Kinnaman courageously handled the task.

Interestingly, here John Woo is a bit disingenuous with the viewer, who is ready to believe that a desperate avenger can crush the enemy with a couple of precise blows. In the first serious fight, Brian barely survives, and an attempt to save a wounded police officer ends in failure. Woo harbors no illusions. 'Silent Rage' is not only a spectacular action film; it is also his diagnosis of the present day. People are divided, there is no help to be expected, families are falling apart, justice does not prevail, and truth has no voice.

In the end, Brian becomes just another participant in the shootout that killed his son, but he no longer thinks about that. Nor about the fact that his wife, who lost a child, might also lose her husband, and that the eliminated gang is just one of thousands. Woo is not putting a question mark at the end of his film for the first time, but this time it looks much bigger and heavier.