If ever there was a movie with the most appropriate title, it would easily be this week’s “Silent Night.”

For this high-octane, extremely violent revenge thriller from the Hong Kong master John Woo (“Hard Target,” “Face/Off”) is exactly that: A “silent” movie with not one word of dialogue.

Joel Kinnaman (“The Suicide Squad,” “For All Mankind”) stars as Godluck, a regular guy playing with his son on Christmas Eve when tragedy strikes. The boy is killed, Godluck, seriously wounded, is left unable to speak. The two victims might as well be trash left in the gutter by the speeding car.

Like “John Wick,” “Taken” and others, Godluck becomes an avenging angel bent on take-no-prisoners revenge.

For Kinnaman, 44, “Just taking away the sound doesn’t really give you a good movie.”

Showing up without any lines to learn meant a different kind of preparation. “Actually” Kinnaman said in a Zoom interview, “it made me understand pretty quickly that when you remove one element – that there will be no dialogue – it makes all the other elements of storytelling much more important.

“It made me realize that dialogue actually helps you get emotion in scenes. It helps propel you into the scene’s emotional elements.”

He learned that, yes, “You can have a little emotion in you and you modulate your voice a little bit and you get away with it. It still sounds like you’re there.

“But the worst expression of that,” said this native Swede, “is what I call ‘the American whisperer acting’ where it’s like” – and he dramatically whispers – “ ‘Listen, I’m gonna (expletive) kill you.’ There’s no real emotion there. It’s just the attitude.

“So I realized really quickly on this movie that I can’t hide. I had to really prepare for every moment on an emotional level that I hadn’t done before. It was a lot of a lot of screaming and throwing chairs around, trying to get the intensity — and my eyes open to create those little micro movements that you get in your face when you’re filled with emotion or intense thought.

“It was,” he added with a smile, “a lot of chairs.”

This first American film in 20 years sees Woo offer a bravura series of revenge sequences. Skulls are cracked, throats sliced, blood flows. Preview audiences have laughed and cheered.

Does Kinnaman ever worry people might be a little too enthusiastic?

“It’s entertainment. It’s escapism,” he answered. “Revenge is something deeply rooted in us as humans, It’s a primal emotion, a primal quality.”

Even when it’s silent.

“Silent Night” opens Friday