‘Silent Night’ a violent winner from John Woo

The revenge thriller “Silent Night” marks the return of the great Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo (“Bullet in the Head,” “Hard Boiled,” “Face/Off”) to the U.S. in 20 years. Set in downtown Los Angeles, the dialogue-free film wastes no time in blasting off. We see Joel Kinnaman’s Brian Godluck, an electrical repairman, running down an alley chasing after gang members, whose four-wheeled shootout with another vehicle has taken the life of his young son with a stray bullet.

Brian wears a blood-stained reindeer sweater with a bulging nose at his stomach. His face is a mirror of grief and vengeance. Instead of white doves, “Silent Night” gives us a single red balloon as a symbol of the soul that has been prematurely snatched at Christmastime. Brian catches up with the perpetrator (Harold Torres) and smashes his windshield only to be shot in the throat and deprived of his voice.

The silence at the heart of “Silent Night” is only verbal. We hear everything else, especially the physical violence, the car engines, the screeching tires, the bullets. The film is alive with sound.

As Brian’s grieving wife Saya and the mother of the dead boy, Academy Award nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno delivers a performance full of stoic grace. Brian’s drinking and refusal to communicate with her outside of a few texts finally breaks her spirit. Saya leaves.

But Brian goes to the Los Angeles police department office of Detective Dennis Vassel (Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi) and takes photographs of the suspects’ mugshots hanging on Vassel’s office wall and embarks upon a dark journey. He stops drinking. He installs a chin-up bar and weights in his home’s workspace. He begins to work out fanatically. The welding and sawing we hear in the background of some scenes could be Brian, transforming himself into a killing machine (Kinnaman has already played RoboCop). He buys guns and learns to use them. He takes photographs with a telescopic lens of the drug-dealing gang members who killed his son, especially a man named Playa (Torres) and his beautiful junkie girlfriend. Brian takes a calendar and marks the next Dec. 24 as the night he will “Kill Them All.” Merry Christmas.

The percussive sound design and driving score of Marco Beltrami (“World War Z”) are more than enough to keep you glued to the screen. Brian buys a cosmetically-challenged Mustang 5.0 and using his welding tools customizes it for battle. “Silent Night” is part “Road Warrior,” part “Taxi Driver” and part “Scarface.” Say hello to my little friends, you can imagine Brian saying, if he could.

One wishes that Woo and screenwriter Robert Archer Lynn (“Already Dead”) had realized that making Brian white and his adversaries Latino adds a racial element that was not necessary to the story. The boy’s mother is Latina. Why not his father? Still, Kinnaman (“Suicide Squad”) is completely committed to his role. The effort he puts into the film’s fights is clearly enormous, and Brian’s grief for his son’s death is palpable. You never for a moment forget why Brian is on a rampage.

All the Woo hallmarks are here, the firepower, standoff, premonitory parrot on a windowsill, symbolic balloon, a music box. As Playa, Torres (“ZeroZeroZero”) is frightening. Playa’s face tattoos are tiger stripes. In a Santa Claus coat, Playa dances in a romantic parody with his junkie girlfriend. They are Death and the maiden. He sends her to confront the intruders. That she resembles Saya is not lost on anyone. Brian’s stairway climb to get to Playa recalls the final battle of Travis Bickle, as well as Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” films. The father and the killer are brothers under the skin. “Silent Night” might not be the new “Die Hard.” But I just know that I’m going to see it again.

(“Silent Night” contains extreme, graphic violence)

“Silent Night”

Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters. Grade: A-