SILENT NIGHT review: There’s nothing calm or bright about this grim UK crime drama

The new UK crime drama Silent Night is the latest in a seemingly never-ending line of “one last job” crime films, but writer-director Will Thorne manages to turn the over-used plot device into a refreshing entry in the blood-soaked genre.

Set in the outskirts of London, Silent Night stars Bradley Taylor as Mark, a steely-eyed ex-con trying to clean up his act to provide for his young daughter (Oriana Rodrigues-Cova). Meanwhile, his former partner Jules (Angela Terence) rightly suspects that Mark is up to his old illicit tricks when he takes on a new job clearing branches in a nearby forest. On the job, he runs into the wiry and aggressive Alan (Cary Crankson), another former con he ran with before his prison sentence. Through happenstance and some good old-fashioned terrible decision-making, the duo soon finds themselves indebted to a violent mob boss named Caddy (Frank Harper), who naturally has “one last job” in mind for them. You might even say it’s an offer they can’t refuse.

While the initial plot beats will certainly be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Guy Ritchie film in the past two decades, director Will Thorne imbues the film with some welcome stylistic flourishes that keep things moving along at a brisk pace. Silent Night is stacked with great performances, from the contentious banter between the two leads to the scene-stealing Joel Fry (most recently seen in Ben Wheatley’s stunning In the Earth) as the only character in the film who seems to be having a good time.

The plot takes a fairly ludicrous turn in the final third of the film, but there’s no denying the cringe-worthy pleasure of watching Mark try to recover from a series of increasingly dangerous mishaps as the stakes keep rising throughout the film’s lean 93-minute run time. A well-shot brutal crime thriller with a stacked cast, Silent Night is a rough gem worth seeking out. It just might scratch that itch for some of the old ultra-violence while we all patiently wait for the next season of BBC’s Gangs of London to once again consume our lives.

Silent Night is available on video-on-demand now.