Tom Clancy's Without Remorse (2021)

By: Mike Ward on Thursday, April 29

R Running Time: 110 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Finally, Michael B. Jordan gets the chance to lead a big-budget major action franchise. And he gives Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse his all.

  • Some of the action scenes are impressive enough to carry enough heft for people to give this a recommendation.

  • Calls to mind the America vs. Russia action movie thrillers of the 1990s.

NO

  • Calls to mind the America vs. Russia action movie thrillers of the 1990s.

  • Even with a fairly thin plot, Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse becomes rather forgettable the moment it ends. In fact, the film seems more interested in building future films than ensuring this one has everything lined up appropriately

  • Has a sinister streak not explored, a sense about elaborate action scenes snuffed out, and a game and worthy lead actor who is given scraps of a rewritten screenplay that is ultimately a rehash of other, better movies. A pretty major disappointment.


OUR REVIEW

After COVID-19 shuttered theaters and altered the movie business for most of 2020 and beyond, Paramount Pictures essentially waved the white flag last year and sold off several upcoming films. Nabbed by Amazon Studios, Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse went from potential theatrical blockbuster to a highly touted streaming platform addition, which may or may not find a following on Amazon Prime.

Amazon’s securing of the film makes sense, as Prime is the home of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” an episodic series starring John Krasinski in a role previously played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine. And now we have an origin story starring Michael B. Jordan as John Kelly, a character found in Clancy’s “Ryanverse,” potentially launching into a lucrative franchise for Jordan, Amazon Studios and Prime Video.

Jordan is game and eager to dive into this opportunity to lead a film franchise like this for the first time. And though we have seen the character of “John Kelly” depicted in other films before (previously portrayed by Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber), Jordan embodies him as a CIA operative who, when we first meet him, is leading the rescue of a fellow colleague held hostage in Syria. His team’s success triggers a group of Russian assassins to head stateside and enact revenge months later. As members of Kelly’s team become singled out and murdered, Kelly’s home is ambushed. With a shocking and unspeakable turn of events, Kelly himself is severely injured, but vows to deliver his own restorative form of revenge for deeply personal reasons.

The opening 20-25 minutes of the film are quite good, with director Stefano Sollima (Sicario: Day of the Soldado) ratcheting up tension and defining the emotional stakes which will plot out Kelly’s journey to fill sudden voids in his personal and professional life. However, once we move past the setup, the film becomes frustratingly mundane. Knowing that Jordan has signed on for both this film and the likely sequel, “Rainbow Six,” we seem to already be preparing for the next story, with screenwriters Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples seemingly forgetting that this first installment needs to matter.

Updated from Clancy’s 1993 source material, Sollima modernizes the film and creates some intense action sequences. A trip to Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport might be the best of the bunch, with Kelly going full vigilante mode and bringing two nefarious Russian agents to a fiery altercation. That rather shocking behavior results in uncovering a name which serves of great interest to Secretary Clay, the U.S. Secretary of the Defense (Guy Pearce). Temporarily behind bars for his actions, Clay frees Kelly to join a team of fighters tasked with ending this Russian threat once and for all.

Sollima has a nice command of crafting these action sequences, and the fight scenes Jordan engages in are shot and cut quite well. But does any of this (maybe, like all of this) sound like something we have watched before?

Quick answer: We have.

And therein lies the issue. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse finds a solid ensemble of actors, and a technically proficient presentation, stuck trying to elevate an exhausted concept of what the tried-and-true action movie should be. In the early or mid-1990s, this would prove to be crackerjack entertainment. Audiences would swoon over Russian/American espionage and action/thrillers with good guys suffering a setback only to then work in clandestine ways to root out the real threat (always a foreign adversary), expose an American who is secretly involved in dirty shenanigans, and have limitless opportunities to save the day for their country.

I imagine a lot of audiences will load this up on Amazon Prime, watch it on their TV, laptop, tablet, or phone (let’s be honest, here), and either be passively entertained or simply bored. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse is not a bad movie, just largely an uninteresting one. Jordan remains a great choice to lead this project. Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim) and Jamie Bell (Rocketman) complete a triad of characters who could play key roles moving forward as future Clancy-driven adaptations come down the pike.

This potential of more John Clark movies is amplified by a mid-credits teaser that is more commonplace with superhero movies. So, while the future may look bright for Clancy projects to populate Amazon Prime Video in the future, it is a bit of a shame that this first foray into the John Kelly wing of Clancy adaptations could not leave a stronger, more lasting impact.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jamie Bell, Guy Pearce, Lauren London, Luke Mitchell, Jack Kesy, Cam Gigandet, Brett Gelman, Todd Lasance, Jacob Scipio, Colman Domingo, Lucy Russell.

Director: Stefano Sollima
Written by: Taylor Sheridan, Will Staples
Based on the novel “Without Remorse”, written by Tom Clancy
Release Date: April 30, 2021
Amazon Studios/Amazon Prime Video