With “Violent Night”, David Harbor joins the list of Bad Santas of cinema. Can you find out which movie these 7 Grumpy Santas are from?
Violent Night stars David Harbor as a disillusioned and tired Santa Claus. Tired, the latter wants to stop since no one really believes in him anymore.
But his meeting with a little girl (Leah Brady) whose family is taken hostage on the evening of December 24 will change everything. With this action film that mixes Die Hard and Maman j’ai missed l’avion, the actor of Hellboy and Stranger Things joins the list of trashy Santa Clauses in cinema.
A look back at 7 other Santa Clauses from the cinema who are far removed from the image of Épinal de Saint Nicolas.
Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola, to whom we owe the two zombie film opuses Dead Snow, the reinterpretation of the Grimm brothers’ tale, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters or the SF film with Noomi Rapace, Seven Sisters, is at the controls of this Christmas action movie.
The latter underlines at the microphone of AlloCiné that his feature film contains a lot of easter eggs. “We refer in particular to films such as: Maman j’ai missed l’avion, Le Sapin a les boules, Scrooge, La Vie est Belle and of course Die Hard!” He adds: “There is in particular a chase scene in snowmobiles like you’ve never seen before, except in a James Bond movie and in Die Hard 2. I’ve always been a fan of snowmobiles and I had a blast setting up this mind-blowing scene.”
And to embody Santa Claus, the choice very quickly fell on David Harbour. The filmmaker explains:It was a natural choice because he is the real Santa Claus! (laughs) Look at his charisma, his physical strength and his sense of humor. He threw himself headlong into this film and he trained like never before to execute all the action scenes..
‘I was going to bed at 5:30 from exhaustion’: David Harbor on his physical training for Violent Night
At one point, Santa Claus is seen putting a grenade in a bad guy’s pants. This is part of a big action scene where Santa Claus is fighting against more than 25 mercenaries with explosions and stunts all over the place. It’s breathtaking.
All this to the rhythm of Christmas carols. Although the soundtrack is very classic we found a collection rock version of the Christmas songs that we all know. There is in particular “Merry Christmas everybody” interpreted by the group Slade in the 70s.“
Violent Night is therefore a real Christmas film for adults to see in cinemas since Wednesday, November 30.