Joel Kinnaman Talks Working With John Woo On ‘Silent Night’, Acting With No Dialogue And Whether He’d Return To DC Universe

Joel Kinnaman stepped into Deadline’s Red Sea Studio in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia this week to talk about his experience of working with legendary action director John Woo for holiday revenge actioner Silent Night and whether he’d return to the DC Universe world.

The Swedish actor, who is a member of the Red Sea Film Festival jury, said that the fact the project had virtually no dialogue excited him because it meant that “everybody in the world is going to see the same film.”

“When you have to read subtitles and you don’t understand the language, there are nuances that get lost,” he said. “Here, nothing gets lost.”

The project, which Lionsgate opened in the U.S. this weekend, also screened here at the festival. Kinnaman plays a tormented father who witnesses his young son die when caught in a gang’s crossfire on Christmas Eve. While recovering from a wound that costs him his voice, he makes vengeance his life’s mission and embarks on a punishing training regimen in order to avenge his son’s death.

On acting with no dialogue, Kinnaman said: “You really had to prep before each take in a way that was much more intense than a traditional film because you have no other means than your eyes. I was hoping to create those little micro movements that happen in the face when you’re deeply emotional or filled with intense thought. So, it demanded me to keep my inner dialogue much more alive. It taught me something about acting for sure.”

Kinnaman said early on in the film, he understood what drew Woo to the concept of but with Silent Night, noting that the director “could just use his visual storytelling genius of telling the story of the scene by designing one long, beautiful shot that tells it all.”

“It’s very cinematic,” he says. “The film sort of plays in two plains where the drama in the film is quite poetic in the way he tells the story and then the action is very fast paced.”

When pressed on whether he’d like to return to the DC Universe after his character Rick Flag in The Suicide Squad films was killed off, Kinnaman responded: “If I were to ever do something I think it would have to be some kind of nasty villain in a big costume of some sort, something that would not make people associate with Flag.”

Check out the video above.