Alexis Louder Archives

Review: ‘Violent Night,’ starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Cam Gigandet, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Edi Patterson and Beverly D’Angelo

November 29, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured from left to right: Alex Hassell, Edi Patterson, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady and David Harbour in “Violent Night” (Photo by Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)

Directed by Tommy Wirkola

Culture Representation: Taking place in Greenwich, Connecticut, the comedic action film “Violent Night” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Santa Claus goes on a rampage to rescue a family held hostage during a home invasion.

Culture Audience: “Violent Night” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching dark and violent action comedies that still have a sweet and sentimental side.

David Harbour and John Leguizamo n “Violent Night” (Photo by Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures)

People who watch “Violent Night” are better off knowing in advance that it’s not a horror movie, but it’s a dark satire of greed during the Christmas holidays, with Santa Claus as an unhinged vigilante during a home invasion. The violence is over-the-top, but the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. The tone of “Violent Night” ranges from intentionally goofy to mischievously cruel. “Violent Night,” as the title indicates, was made for viewers who have a high tolerance for bloody gore but want some comedy to balance out the gruesome scenes.

“Violent Night” director Tommy Wirkola’s filmography includes directing the Norwegian-language films “Dead Snow “(2009) “Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead” (2014) and “The Trip” (2021), as well as the 2013 English-language film “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.” What all of these movies have in common is satire mixed with action, with varying degrees of violence and horror. The “Violent Night” screenplay was written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who both previously collaborated on writing the screenplays for the live-action/animated films “Sonic the Hedgehog” (2020) and “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (2021), which are both based on the popular video game series. All of this might explain why “Violent Night” often has a cartoonish/video-game quality to it that will either entertain or turn off viewers.

“Violent Night” begins with showing Santa Claus (played by David Harbour) starting his long night of delivering presents on Christmas Eve. This Santa Claus in “Violent Night” (who is destined to be ranked as one of the all-time best “bad Santas” in movies) is not supposed to be someone in costume. This Santa Claus is supposed to be the “real deal.” And to prove it, he’s got a magical scroll listing the “naughty” and “nice” people of the world.

Santa Claus is actually a drunken grouch on this particular Christmas. He’s unhappy because Mrs. Claus has died. He’s also become disillusioned by how avarice and materialistic commercialism have taken over the Christmas holiday season.

Instead of having a bellyful of jolly laughs, this Santa Claus is more likely to have a bellyful of a digested meal that he will vomit on someone while he’s high up in the air on his magical sleigh. And that’s exactly what Santa Claus does early on in the movie, when an unlucky elderly woman goes outside to watch Santa Claus riding through the air, and he spews vomit all over her. It sets the tone for more mayhem that will happen in the movie.

Meanwhile, a fractured family is getting ready to spend time at the mansion of the family’s wealthy matriarch in Greenwich, Connecticut. Jason Lightstone (played by Alex Hassell) and Linda Lightstone (played by Alexis Louder) are separated but have decided to spend Christmas together for the sake of their 7-year-old daughter Trudy Lightstone (played by Leah Brady), who wants her parents to get back together. Jason and Linda’s marital problems have a lot to do with assertive and intelligent Linda wanting mild-mannered and passive Jason to be more independent of his dysfunctional and domineering family.

When Jason, Linda and Trudy arrive at the mansion, it’s easy to see why Linda wants to keep her distance from Jason’s side of the family. Jason’s mother Gertrude Lightstone (played by Beverly D’Angelo), the family’s foul-mouthed matriarch, is rude, crude and the epitome of cold-blooded greed. How vile is Gertrude? Trudy’s real name is Gertrude (she was named after her grandmother), but Trudy prefers to be called Trudy as a nickname. And when Gertrude finds out, she snarls at Trudy about her nickname: “That makes you sound like a whore.”

Jason’s older sister Alva Lightstone (played by Edi Patterson) isn’t much better than Gertrude. As soon as Jason arrives, Alva lets him know she can’t wait for their mother to die, so Alva can take over the family business for herself. And if Jason wants to have any control of the business, Alva is going to put up a fight. Alva also insults Linda by making this insensitive comment to her in a snide tone: “You’ve gained weight.”

Alva is divorced and has a narcissistic son named Bert (played by Alexander Elliot), who is obsessed with filming himself for social media. Alva either ignores Bert or treats him as a nuisance. For this family gathering, Alva has also brought her vain and shallow boyfriend Morgan Steel (played by Cam Gigandet), who’s an actor and filmmaker. It’s mentioned later that Morgan is only with Alva because he wants Gertrude to finance his next movie.

The expected bickering ensues when these family members get together during a formal dinner party where the and the servants dressed as elves are the only ones in attendance. These elves include Krampus (played by Brendan Fletcher), Candy Cane (played by Mitra Suri) and Sugarplum (played by Stephanie Sy), with Krampus as the one who’s the most full of surprises. The Lightstone family feuding gets interrupted by a group of home invaders, led by a wisecracking cynic whose name is listed in the movie’s end credits as Scrooge (played by John Leguizamo), who has been planning this robbery for months.

The servants dressed as elves are really Scrooge’s accomplices. And they are all there to steal the $300 million in cash that Gertrude has in a hidden vault inside the mansion. It’s eventually revealed how and why Gertrude is hiding this fortune. Much later in the movie, while the chaos of this robbery is still happening, a no-nonsense leader named Commander Thorp (played by Mike Dopud) shows up in military fatigues with his team members that are also in matching military outfits. Their roles in the movie are also eventually disclosed.

It just so happens that Santa Claus has arrived at the Thornton mansion just as the home invasion robbery has taken place. His reindeers have taken off with his sleigh, so he’s essentially stranded. When he looks inside the house and sees that the family has been taken hostage, at first he doesn’t want to get involved. But he has a change of heart when he sees the terror on innocent Trudy’s face. And the robbers will soon find out it’s a big mistake to get Santa Claus mad.

“Violent Night” is often a series of slapstick comedy scenes immersed in a lot of viciousness that’s intended to make people laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. The movie (which had its first public showing at New York Comic Con on October 7, 2022) is well-paced and can hold people’s interest, even though the plot is generally simplistic and predictable. Trudy’s Christmas gift from her parents is a walkie talkie that Jason tells her can is “a direct line to Santa.” This walkie talkie is used as a comedic plot device and as a source of hope when things start to look grim for the hostages.

Harbour is perfectly cast as this roguish and boorish Santa Claus, who channels his inner action hero to help this family, even when he bumbles and fumbles along the way. Leguizamo and D’Angelo are also standouts for how Scrooge and Gertrude try to one-up each other in proving who’s the bigger badass. And although the rest of the adult actors in the movie have their memorable moments, Brady’s portrayal of Trudy ends up being the heart of the film.

There will no doubt be comparisons of Trudy Lightstone to the Kevin McCallister character (played by Macauley Culkin) in the 1990 comedy blockbuster “Home Alone,” a movie that’s also about a seemingly harmless kid who becomes resourceful in fighting back against robbers during a Christmas home invasion. It just so happens that Trudy has recently seen “Home Alone,” which inspires her to do certain things in “Violent Night” that will remind people of “Home Alone.” The “Home Alone” references are examples of the type of cheeky comedy in “Violent Night.”

But make no mistake: The grisly brutality in “Violent Night” makes it a far different movie than the relatively squeaky-clean “Home Alone.” The dialogue and jokes in “Violent Night” are sometimes a little stale, but people interested in “Violent Night” aren’t expecting it to be an intellectual film. It’s all about seeing how a grumpy, “loose cannon” Santa Claus acts when he has to fight some people who’ve been very naughty—and how Santa gets some heroic help from a girl who adores him.

Universal Pictures will release “Violent Night” in U.S. cinemas on December 2, 2022.

Review: ‘Copshop’ (2021), starring Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo

September 8, 2021

by Carla Hay

Frank Grillo (center) in “Copshop” (Photo courtesy of Open Road Films/Briarcliff Entertainment)

“Copshop” (2021)

Directed by Joe Carnahan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Gun Creek, Nevada, the action film “Copshop” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and the criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A con artist, who has landed in jail for assaulting a cop, finds out that more than one person in the jail is out to kill him because of his past alliance with a murdered district attorney.

Culture Audience: “Copshop” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo and like seeing a movie with a badly conceived story and a lot of unrealistic violence.

Gerard Butler in “Copshop” (Photo courtesy of Open Road Films/Briarcliff Entertainment)

“Copshop” can’t decide if it wants to be a gritty action flick or a wacky crime comedy. The result is that this creatively bankrupt film is an incoherent mess. The dialogue is awful, the acting is mediocre, and it’s just a time-wasting excuse to be a “shoot ’em up” flick with a nonsensical plot. Directed by Joe Carnahan, who co-wrote the “Copshop” screenplay with Kurt McLeod, “Copshop” is filled with lazy tropes that a lot of audiences dislike about mindless, violent movies.

“Copshop” over-relies on these tiresome clichés: Characters sustain major injuries that would put them in a hospital, but then these same characters miraculously move around less than an hour later as if they’ve got nothing but bruises. People draw guns on each other with the intent to kill, but then they spend a ridiculous amount of time giving dumb speeches or trading insults instead of shooting. And worst of all: “Copshop” constantly plays tricks on viewers about who’s really dead and who’s really alive.

All of that might be excused if the action scenes were imaginative, if the storylines were exciting and/or if the characters’ personalities were appealing. But most of the principal characters in “Cop Shop” are hollow and forgettable. The fight scenes are monotonous and nothing that fans of action flicks haven’t already seen in much better movies.

“Copshop” takes place in the fictional Nevada city of Gun Creek, which is in the middle of a desert. (“Copshop” was actually filmed in New Mexico and Georgia.) Gun Creek is a fairly small city, which is why there are only about six or seven cops on duty at the Gun Creek Police Department’s headquarters, where most of the action takes place when the police department goes under siege one night. You know a movie is bad when guns and bombs are going off in a police department, and yet the cops are too stupid to try to call for help immediately.

Nothing about this police department and its jail looks authentic. Before the chaos breaks out, everything is too neat, too quiet and too clean in the cops’ office space and in the jail. In other words, everything looks like a movie set. This phoniness just lowers the quality of this already lowbrow movie.

And the cinematography went overboard in trying to make the jail look “edgy,” because it’s too dark inside. And yet the jail cells are spotless. Jail cells aren’t supposed to look like a sleek underground nightclub. This movie is such a bad joke.

The gist of the moronic story is that Theodore “Teddy” Morretto (played by Frank Grillo) is a con artist who’s on the run from an assassin. In one part of the movie, Teddy describes himself as some kind of power broker who likes to introduce powerful people to each other and help fix their problems. He doesn’t like to call himself a “fixer” though. He likes to call himself a “manufacturer.”

One of the people whom Teddy had past dealings with was an attorney general named Fenton (played by Dez), who has been murdered. This crime has made big news in the area. Because of information that Teddy knows, he figures that he’s next on the hit list of whoever wanted Fenton dead.

In case it wasn’t clear that someone wants Teddy to be killed, a flashback scene shows that a bomb was set in Teddy’s car, it exploded, and he barely escaped with his life. His clothes caught on fire, but then later in the story, there’s no mention of him having the kind of burn injuries that he would’ve gotten from the types of flames spread on his body. It’s just sloppy screenwriting on display.

Teddy has come up with a plan to hide out for a while. He deliberately gets himself arrested because he thinks he’ll be “safer” in jail. Teddy disrupts a nighttime wedding reception at a casino, where a brawl is happening outdoors. When the police show up, Teddy assaults one of the cops and literally pleads for a cop to use a taser on him.

The cop who obliges his request is rookie Valerie Young (played by Alexis Louder), who is measured and sarcastic in her interactions with people. On the same night that Teddy is hauled into the police station and put in a jail cell, an anonymous drunk man who has no identification is also arrested and put in the jail cell across from Teddy. The other man got arrested because he crashed his car into a highway fence, right in front of two patrol officers who were parked nearby.

It turns out (and this isn’t spoiler information) that this other arrestee is really an assassin named Bob Viddick (played by Gerard Butler), who is somewhat of a legend among the criminals in Nevada. Somehow, Bob found out that Teddy was in the police department’s jail, and he got himself arrested because he’s been assigned to murder Teddy. And just so you know how incompetent this police department is, Bob has smuggled a gun into the jail cell.

The rest of “Copshop” is literally a bunch of shootouts, as the police station goes under siege when another assassin shows up. He’s a lunatic gangster named Anthony Lamb (played by Toby Huss), and he wants to kill Teddy, Bob and everyone else in the building, except for a corrupt cop who has access to a large haul of confiscated drugs that Anthony wants. This criminal cop is named Huber (played by Ryan O’Nan), and he owes Anthony a lot of money.

Huber is one of the cops in charge of the inventory/evidence at the police department. Huber plans to steal several bricks of what looks like cocaine, in order to pay off his debts to Anthony. It’s a dumb plan because this police department is so small that it would be easy to figure out who took the drug stash.

Huber already looks suspicious, because he’s been sweaty and acting nervous all night. Here’s an example of the movie’s terrible dialogue. When a fellow cop notices that Huber has been acting furtive and preoccupied with the inventory room, he asks Huber, “What’s got you so curious?” Huber replies, “Curiosity.”

Rookie cop Valerie is telegraphed early on as the one who will be the movie’s big hero. But she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. When she looks up Teddy’s criminal record, she’s astonished to see that he’s been arrested 22 times but no charges were ever filed against him. “How does that happen?” she asks a fellow cop in the office. Can you say “confidential informant,” Valerie?

Despite being saddled with a horrible script, Louder’s wisecracking depiction of Valerie is one of the few things that can be considered close to a highlight of “Copshop.” The other is the nutty performance of Huss as mobster Anthony, who is a scene stealer. How unhinged is Anthony? He starts singing in the middle of the mayhem. “Copshop” uses Curtis Mayfield’s 1972 hit “Freddie’s Dead” has a recurring song in more than one scene.

However, there’s nothing about any of the characters in the movie that can be considered outstanding enough for audiences to be clamoring for a sequel. Butler and Grillo are two of the producers of “Copshop,” so they’re partially to blame for how this embarrassing schlock turned out, but Carnahan (also a “Copshop” producer) is the one who’s chiefly responsible. It’s not the first time they’ve done these types of unimpressive B-movies, and it won’t be the last time.

Open Road Films and Briarcliff Entertainment will release “Copshop” in U.S. cinemas on September 17, 2021. The movie had a one-night-only sneak preview in U.S. cinemas on September 8, 2021.