Review: 'Violent Night' is the blood-soaked action-comedy — centered on Santa Claus — that you never knew you needed

How do you settle the argument about whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie? Apparently, by making a “Die Hard”-style movie that is unmistakably a Christmas movie — because the Bruce Willis character is none other than Santa Claus himself.

That’s the wonderfully wackadoo premise of “Violent Night,” a blood-thirsty action comedy that messes around with the holiday themes in ways that are both clever and brutal.

We meet our Kris Kringle, played with jaded grumpiness by David Harbour, in a British pub — and he’s definitely not feeling like a jolly old elf. Santa is murmuring into his pint glass that this may be his last Christmas, because the kids don’t seem to believe any more. He semi-drunkenly moves from house to house, and is dismayed that all the children want in their stockings are video games and cash.

Cash is in ample supply at the Lightstone mansion in Connecticut, where Jason Lightstone (Alex Hassell) and his estranged wife Linda (Alexis Louder) are taking their 8-year-old daughter Trudy (Leah Brady) for another holiday where everyone tries to ingratiate themselves to the matriarch, Gertrude Lightstone (Beverly D’Angelo). Gertrude loves busting the chops of her progeny, especially her suck-up daughter Alva (Edi Patterson, from “Lights Out”) and Alva’s B-list action-star boyfriend Morgan Steel (Cam Gigandet, who is, yes, a B-list action star). (Yes, this movie is joining “The Menu,” “Glass Onion” and “Triangle of Sadness” in this year’s ever-growing “rich people suck” film festival.)

The not-so-happy Christmas Eve gathering takes a turn for the worse, when a cadre of gun-toting thieves crashes the party, killing the hired help and threatening to do the same to all the Lightstones. All the villains have Christmas-themed code names, with the mastermind (John Leguizamo) going by Scrooge. His target is the $300 million in cash Gertrude keeps in a basement vault.

Of course, Scrooge & Co. aren’t the only home invaders in the Lightstone house this night. Santa has landed upstairs, enjoying Trudy’s cookies and the family brandy, when he runs into one of the thieves, and dispatches him quite messily. (Writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller — who also penned the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies — devise a backstory showing Santa’s earlier life as a merciless hammer-swinging 11th century warrior.)

Santa tries to leave, but when he sees Trudy — and checks that she’s on his nice list — he vows to rescue her and take down Scrooge’s team. Trudy plays a role, too, setting up booby traps in the attic, just like in “Home Alone” (though with more lethal outcomes).

Director Tommy Wirkola — who gave us Nazi zombies in the “Dead Snow” movies — stages the mayhem creatively, with acrobatic moves and maximum bloodshed, and with a gleeful abandon that confirms the movie is on the comedy side of the action-comedy divide.

Mostly, though, “Violent Night” is a chance to watch Harbour — much loved as Police Chief Jim Hopper on “Stranger Things” — go to town as another gruff but lovable character. Even when Santa’s white beard starts getting as red as his suit, from the bloody nose he gets early on, Harbour is having a (jingle) ball. 

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‘Violent Night’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout and some sexual references. Running time: 112 minutes.