Action icon John Woo on why he loves LA and what brought him back to Hollywood
LOS ANGELES — Hong Kong auteur John Woo is back working in Hollywood for the first time since 2003's "Paycheck" with Christmas actioner "Silent Night," in which the influential director of classics "Hard Boiled," "The Killer" and "Face/Off" proves he's still got a master's touch when it comes to breathtaking balletic violence and broken antiheroes. But "Silent Night," out this Friday from Lionsgate, also marks a departure from the high spectacle fans might expect from Woo, whose "heroic bloodshed" landmarks of the '80s and '90s shaped modern action as we know it.
At its center is a grieving father (Joel Kinnaman) bent on revenge after gangsters kill his young son and injure him one Christmas Eve, rendering him unable to speak. He's far from one of Woo's lethally cool heroes, an everyman who makes plenty of mistakes in his quest for justice. The film, intimately scaled with bursts of explosive violence, car chases, brutal fight sequences and shootouts, features no spoken dialogue. And Woo's symbolic slo-mo doves are nowhere to be found.
But the 77-year-old director relishes the chance to stretch and surprise, even with more than three dozen features under his belt. With a twinkle in his eye, Woo notes the unique milestone that "Silent Night" marks. "It's
