David Harbour on his new Christmas film Violent Night

Get ready for Santa to save the day with fists, not presents, in the new black comedy action film Violent Night. David Harbour stars as Santa Claus, but as co-star John Leguizamo describes it, “This Santa is very different than anything you’ve seen.”

In Violent Night, Santa is not “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas.” It’s quite the opposite. Santa has created a commercialist world where greed and selfishness rule. It’s all about the number of presents, which is the furthest thing from the spirit of Christmas. Santa feeds into consumerism and shows no signs of remorse as he’d rather spend time at the bar than in the sky.

On Christmas Eve, Santa witnesses an attack on a wealthy family’s home by a group of mercenaries. The mercenaries are led by Scrooge (Leguizamo) as they attempt to break into the family’s vault and steal hundreds of millions of dollars. When a young girl (Leah Brady) asks Santa to intervene, he accepts and fights the mercenaries by any means necessary. Violent Night is far from your ordinary Christmas movie, but it borrows tropes from famous holiday films before it.

“It’s like two movies in one. This crazy Die Hard, trapped in a house, mercenaries, vault underneath, $300 million dollars,” said Harbour. “And then you have Miracle on 34th Street movie, and they just sort of like smash together.”

Directed by Tommy Wirkola from a script by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, Violent Night features an ensemble cast that includes Cam Gigandet, Aledx Hassell, Alexis Louder, Edi Patterson, Ali Asghar Shah, and Beverly D’Angelo. David Leitch, who recently directed Bullet Train, will produce along with Kelly McCormick and Guy Danella. The film has a little bit of everything in it, but at the end of the day, it’s a Christmas movie.

“It’s all-you-can-eat violence, gore, hilarity, really touching and moving, and great freaking action,” said Leguizamo.

Violent Night opens in theaters on December 2.

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