The silent-film era ended nearly a hundred years ago with the advent of “talkies” in the late 1920s. But that’s not stopping John Woo from making “Silent Night,” a film now in post-production that will have no dialogue.

Shot in Mexico last year, Silent Night narrates the story of a father, played by Joel Kinnaman, trying to avenge his son who was the victim of gang violence on Christmas Eve. It will be Woo’s first American feature since “Paycheck,” the 2003 sci-fi thriller starring Ben Affleck. “Silent Night” also stars Kid Cudi, Harold Torres and Catalina Sandino Moreno. The script was written by Robert Archer Lynn.

In a recent interview for Vulture, Woo explained his decision to make the film as he did: “The whole movie is without dialogue. It allowed me to use visuals to tell the story, to tell how the character feels. We are using music instead of language. And the movie is all about sight and sound. … in this movie, I tried to combine things without doing any coverage shots. I had to force myself to use a new kind of technique. Some scenes were about two or three pages, but I did it all in one shot.”

Born in Hong Kong, Woo first came to prominence some thirty years ago with his so-called “heroic bloodshed” films: “A Better Tomorrow” (1986), “The Killer” (1989), and “Hard-Boiled”(1992). His first Hollywood production was “Hard Target” (1992), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Woo has told interviewers that his biggest influence was Jean-Pierre Melville: “He was my hero. I loved his movies. I stole from two of his movies, “Le Samouraï” and “The Red Circle,” when I made “The Killer.” He was the biggest influence on me.

” Woo also was strongly inspired by the director Chang Cheh, with whom he worked for two years in the 1970s at Shaw Brothers.

A release date for Silent Night has not yet been announced.

Check out more of Edward’s articles.