STACK #218 December 2022

CINEMA FEATURE

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Die Hard is a Christmas movie STACK asked director Tommy Wirkola to name his favourite Christmas movie. “ Die Hard obviously,” he replies, explaining how when he first received Violent Night ’s script, it was pitched as basically ‘ Die Hard without Bruce Willis’. “ Die Hard really had a lot of heart,

which is what I wanted to do with [ Violent Night ]. Like yes, we can go as crazy as we want with the action and the humour and the gore, but it doesn’t work unless we have a heart, and I really want this to feel like a Christmas movie.”

Wanting a villain tough enough to face-off against David Harbour’s jaded Santa in the Christmas action comedy Violent Night , producer David Leitch looked no further than comic veteran John Leguizamo. Words Gill Pringle H aving already demonstrated his ability to whip between evil and funny in two John YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!

recalls. “My initial response was, ‘What are you talking about?’ But then the filmmakers called me up and told me the general idea, and it sounded so hilarious, fresh and different. “When they sent me the script, I got really into it but, in my mind, it was still a big risk because it was like two movies smashed into one. That’s what was so unique about it. “So, when I started the script, I didn’t think it could work, but by the end, I was choked up and thought it was really beautiful. It was a great script that we made better as we got into it,” adds Harbour, whose surly Santa is at a crossroads. Suffering an existential crisis, he’s lost his Christmas spirit,

ready to hang up his boots in the belief that Christmas has been overtaken by consumerism and greed. Then he comes down the chimney of this besieged mansion and realises a little girl and her family are in danger. We soon learn that, before Santa donned the jolly red suit and hitched up the reindeer, he had a very different life, a history that’s about to make him the ideal protector for this exact moment. “Santa was a greedy, violent Norwegian Viking who travelled the Scandinavian countries in

Wick movies, David Leitch knew John Leguizamo would bring both the merry and the menace to his merciless mercenary, code-named Scrooge. Better yet, Leguizamo is a legendary improviser, credited for adding his own memorable lines to Violent Night , cracking up the cast as he reworked the script. “Mine were like ‘Bah humbug motherf–er’, and the song ‘Violent Night, Gory Night…’,” Leguizamo tells STACK . Portraying the leader of a gang of robbers who break into a wealthy family's compound on Christmas

David Harbour and John Leguizamo

search of treasure, killing anyone who got in his way,” explains Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola. “But when we meet him in the film, he hasn’t thought about that life or been close to that life for hundreds of years, but over the course of the events of the film, he’s forced to put some of his skills from the past into practice.” One thing is certain – you don’t want to get on the wrong side of this badass Santa!

“You can't just jump out there and do these things, so I was training six hours a day with JoJo, doing the big fight scene over and over again till I look like a real assassin – and David, is 6’ 3” and younger than me, and he gained like 100 pounds for the role. “So I asked JoJo, ‘Make me look better than him, because it's not going to be easy to fight the big guy’,” he laughs. Fresh from his success in the Stranger Things series, Harbour was initially unsure about the role. “I first heard the pitch from my agent, who told me, ‘It’s a violent Santa Claus movie,’” he

Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, Scrooge’s team is unprepared for a formidable festive foe – a Santa Claus who handily demonstrates why this Nick is no saint. At 5’ 8”, Leguizamo immediately knew he’d need to get into fighting shape if he was going to prove a worthy adversary to David Harbour’s hulking Santa. “David Leitch is one of the great stunt coordinators, directors and producers of all time, especially of action movies. And he hired one of the greatest stunt coordinators, Jonathan ‘JoJo’ Eusebio, and we worked meticulously for a month before we shot,” says Leguizamo.

Violent Night is in cinemas now

DECEMBER 2022

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