Joel Kinnaman tried going mute for Silent Night

Joel Kinnaman thought he would give his best shot at working with the legendary John Woo for the upcoming revenge actioner Silent Night by going, well, silent.

Appearing in The Tonight Show, Joel Kinnaman remembered his attempt at going completely mute for Silent Night — which Woo boasted as having no dialogue — saying he ran into his first hurdle when he realized he and his fiancée wouldn’t be chatting for months. “Listen, this is gonna be a tough one for our relationship. I’m not gonna talk for the whole shoot and not talk with you either. So we’re not gonna have any communication.” For some couples, this would be ideal, but according to the actor their relationship coach tried to steer Kinnaman away from the test.

Things really came to a head when it came time for Joel Kinnaman to interact with the Silent Night crew. “Then the first day of shooting starts, and I get in the car. Super quiet the whole car ride to set…And then, I get into the makeup trailer and everyone’s, like, hanging out and, like, talking, and I’m sitting there in the makeup trailer…I had a really, really intense silent car ride to set. The car ride was basically the whole thing, you know? So that kind of charged me up with enough silence that I needed for the rest of the shoot.”

While Joel Kinnaman’s attempt at method acting will never be noticed in the movie itself, Silent Night may be most noted ahead of its release for being John Woo’s first American film since 2003’s Paycheck. That it will have no dialogue will also hopefully reaffirm Woo as one of the great visual action directors of his time. We’ll also presumably get lots of slow-motion and doves…

Joel Kinnaman can currently be seen on Apple TV+’s For All Mankind, the fourth season of which premiered earlier this month.

Are you looking forward to John Woo’s first American movie in two decades? Does the No-dialogue gimmick sound like something Woo can pull off?

Silent Night decks movie theater screens on December 1st.