Without Remorse of Stefano Sollima asks some crucial questions about identity, politics and violence, but however at the end it leaves you disappointed.
Without Remorse is the ancient story of a former Navy SEAL curved intelligence officer named John Clark, at the time when he was working as a soldier named John Kelly. He is a part of ‘Ryanverse’ of Tom Clancy which includes the Jack Ryan films and books. Without Remorse, featuring Michael B Jordan is a part of the same universe as Jack Ryan's series of John Krasinski on Amazon Prime.
Currently, John Clark is a very popular character. He is tougher than Ryan but is a planned and skilled fighter with amazing survival skills. In this movie, he has been retconned from a soldier at the time of the Cold War to recent times. He is also portrayed by Jordan, who is an extraordinarily talented and popular actor. John Clark or Kelly, doubtlessly has the potential to cross the moral and analytical Jack Ryan amongst the younger generation because of stages in his character. Only if the story plot had the capacity to hold the weightage of the film.
The film kickstarts with John Kelly taking his men on a captive rescue mission held in Aleppo Syria. They then searched out that the troops carrying the hostage are basically Russian. They get into an uncalled for confrontation and one man from their team passed way.
After three months, we get to see him relishing in a barbecue along with his pregnant wife and friends, cut to with two other members of his team being killed by anonymous assailants. John, who carries some new plans for his wife and unborn daughter doesn’t have the knowledge that his life will turn upside down when these assailants goes into his house and murder his wife in his place.
John, who also gets shot numerous times, somehow get through with his life. On the other side, the CIA orders that all investigations in his case be postponed. When Lt Commander, his teammate and Karen Greer (who is the niece of well known Ryanverse character James Greer) privately informs him of this growth, John decides to basically went furious.
What continues next is generally a slideshow of how clever, strong and brutal John is. There are a group of twists which comes to an end in John, Karen as well as a group of American soldiers exactly crashing into Russia to search the man who murdered John’s wife.
John basically portrays the judge, executioner and jury throughout the movie. After a sometime you cannot count of the number of bodies that are filled with his bullets. He also sustain an unbelievable amount of deadly accidents, from a shoot-out, a plane crash, to a bombing. The movie is so predictable because there is a crystal pattern for what is to happen in the next scene.
Without Remorse is not worse or boring. If you are a deadly action movie admirer, you will love the mind numbing scenes of bullets flying all over the place. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a semse why all of it is going on, you will be a little perplexed. The movie brings up some intriguing points about the uselessness of war, and how pawns loses everything because kings want to be the part of the games. However, the way they portray these concepts feel incomplete.
In terms of portrayals, Michael B Jordan is amazing as a leading man. He presents himself physically and emotionally in the whole film, that you exactly believe he has been shot and is pushing himself through a corridor.
Nevertheless, the revelation of the movie is Jodie Turner-Smith aka Karen Greer. The character in itself is so unique from most most military portrayals written for movies, especially that for women. It’s not a great deal that she is the only woman soldier in the ground. But, she is the one ruling everyone. Both her as well as John are two alpha characters who sometimes are at quarrelsome disagreement with each other, but they allow each other to bloom at the charge of the team. Turner-Smith is extraordinary as Greer, and you will adore for her more than John.
So should Without Remorse be watched? If you are a fan of Jack Ryan then you shall like the movie better than the ones who aren’t. The movie ends with the clue of a sequel, so here are some expectations that the second film will be much better than this. Big franchises often have films that are sensitive to the story plot but aren’t huge as individual movies. Without Remorse can be included in that list.
