What’s It About
An elite Navy SEAL uncovers an international conspiracy while seeking justice for the murder of his pregnant wife in Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, the explosive origin story of action hero John Clark – one of the most popular characters in author Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan universe. When a squad of Russian soldiers kills his family in retaliation for his role in a top-secret op, Sr. Chief John Kelly (Michael B. Jordan) pursues the assassins at all costs. Joining forces with a fellow SEAL (Jodie Turner-Smith) and a shadowy CIA agent (Jamie Bell), Kelly’s mission unwittingly exposes a covert plot that threatens to engulf the U.S. and Russia in an all-out war. Torn between personal honor and loyalty to his country, Kelly must fight his enemies without remorse if he hopes to avert disaster and reveal the powerful figures behind the conspiracy.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Another Tom Clancy adaptation, and for a man that died almost eight years ago, he’s doing quite well. For those that don’t know, he is to military films what Stephen King is to horror – An iconic fixture within his genre. And just like King, Tom Clancy was destined to have hits as well as misses. This time it’s his 1993 novel Without Remorse. A thriller about a Navy SEAL that uncovers a war-inducing plot to put America at odds with Russia. Without Remorse also serves as the origin of the fundamental character John T. Clark. For this movie, we learn his “real” name is John Kelly (Jordan). The film opens with the promise of a great thriller with loads of covert action, and for all concerned, it does not disappoint. Immediately after, it attempts to turn into the classic wordy Tom Clancy drama-filled thriller. Usually, that wouldn’t be an issue, but stopping the action so a character can have a conversation right before they’re killed, gets old fast. Not to mention the pace of the movie is very uneven and borderline boring at times. It takes some awful writing to make a revenge story boring, so I guess I need to applaud whoever rewrote Mr. Clancy’s book. They took a fantastic novel and turned it into a lackluster nightmare. The filmmakers did an excellent job with the fights, the covert stuff, and the chase scenes. They obviously used liberties in choosing which parts of the novel they wanted to replicate. Unfortunately, they left so much stuff out that the things they left in seemed out of place, inconsistent, or just plain stupid. People love Tom Clancy for his authentic depictions. This film turns nearly all of his authenticity into some low-budget half-assed shoot-em-up. As for the acting, I like Michael B. Jordan, but we are starting to see limitations to his acting style. I think he may have hung around Stallone too long. The rest of the cast had a somewhat improvisational feel to their tone, so I guess in the big scheme of things, they would not win any awards, so it didn’t matter. Since I mentioned the script, there was much of a one to memorize. I’ve seen other Clancy adaptations, and there are episodes of shows based on his novels that contain more dialog. Overall, Without Remorse has a desperately rushed and clunky feel to it. If the studios plan on expanding on Clancy’s legacy, they need to do a lot better than this.
OUR RATING – A COVERT SHOULD HAVE STAYED SEALED 4
MEDIA
- Genre – Action
- Street date
- Digital – April 30th, 2021
- DVD/Blu-Ray – May 3rd, 2022
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2.39:1
- Sound – English: DTS-HD MA 5.1
- Subtitles – English, French
Extras
- none