John Woo sets return to Hollywood after nearly 20 years with Suicide Squad star Joel Kinnaman

Let the doves loose, because John Woo is back.

The legendary director of such action classics as The Killer, Hard Boiled, and Face/Off (yes, that's a classic) is making his return to Hollywood after nearly 20 years. Following a string of films in his native Hong Kong, Woo will helm the U.S. action film Silent Night, with The Suicide Squad's Joel Kinnaman attached to star.

According to Deadline, which first reported the news, the film will star Kinnaman as a father who ventures into the underworld to avenge his young son's death, and will feature no dialogue at all, which is both exciting for fans of Woo's extravagant visual filmmaking and disappointing for fans of Face/Off's exquisite turns of phrase.

Woo began his career in Hong Kong with a series of acclaimed and influential action films, including 1986's A Better Tomorrow and 1990's Bullet in the Head, before embarking on a Hollywood career in the mid-1990s. Besides Face/Off, his English-language films include 1993's Hard Target, the loved-by-some Mission: Impossible 2, and the more negatively received Windtalkers and Paycheck. The latter, released in 2003, marked the end of Woo's Hollywood tenure, and he returned to filmmaking in Asia with the two-part historical epic Red Cliff in 2008. He has not directed a film since 2017's Manhunt, a return to his action-movie roots that was released on Netflix.

Silent Night has yet to secure a distributor or set a release date.

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