The Suicide Squad star Joel Kinnaman has discussed filming the upcoming action movie Silent Night with legendary director John Woo. Unlike the movie itself, which will feature no dialogue whatsoever, Kinnaman has used his words to heap praise on working with Woo, with Silent Night marking the beloved Face/Off filmmaker’s return to Hollywood after almost two decades.

“Pretty epic. I've never worked with a director... I mean, maybe Jonathan Demme who did a bunch of episodes on The Killing. He was up there. But I've never worked with anyone that tells so much story just by how he moves the camera. And it was fascinating to see. He tells the story in the way where he puts the camera, how he moves it.”

John Woo’s affinity for telling the story with just a camera will come in handy when making Silent Night, which finds Joel Kinnaman as a father on a mission to avenge his young son who was tragically caught in the crossfire of gang violence on Christmas Eve. Shot and nearly killed while in pursuit of the murderers, Godlock vows to avenge his son by any means necessary.

The simplicity of the story behind Silent Night is absolutely necessary, considering the action movie’s hook. There will be no dialogue. No words will be exchanged between any characters. No expositional scenes. Kinnaman went on to tease the “dynamic action” while speaking with Collider, describing the script (which must have been quite short considering the lack of speech) as “perfect” and the movie as “pretty damn epic.”

“It was the perfect kind of script to try this sort of cinematic experiment. It's a very dynamic action movie with a lot of heavy drama, but the actual plot is pretty simple. And I think you really want that in a film where you don't have any dialogue to explain to the viewers what's happening. So I think it's going to be pretty easy to follow, and hopefully you'll get all the emotion just through the eyes and through the action. And I hope it's going to be pretty damn epic. That's what it felt like when we shot it.”

Silent Night Has Been No Easy Task for Joel Kinnaman

While many would think that making a movie with no lines would be much easier for an actor, Kinnaman explained why this was far from the case.

“Some people thought like, ‘Oh, that's easy. You don't have to learn any lines’, but it's not, because the eyes don't lie. And often the dialogue, it will help you get there. It would help you get emotionally there. So it's actually a lot harder to portray everything that you just have to have that kind of inner life and that inner motor and those thought processes going for real. You just can't hide. So I think it's very revealing when there's no dialogue. And so it was a great challenge, and I was very excited that he wanted to do it with me.”

The complete lack of chatter should give Joel Kinnaman the chance to stretch his acting muscles like never before — while using his physical muscles to dispatch bad guys in all manner of violent ways, of course.

Silent Night has now wrapped principal photography, which took place in Mexico City, and stars Kid Cudi alongside Kinnaman. The rest of the core supporting cast is made up of Harold Torres and Catalina Sandino Moreno. Silent Night has not yet been given a release date.