Michael B. Jordan deserves to be an action star, but not in a warmed-over ’90s-style thriller like Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse. Jordan stars in the origin story for popular Clancy character John Clark, who’s never gotten the same screen spotlight as Clancy’s better-known creation Jack Ryan. Ryan has been played by four actors (Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine) across five movies, plus by John Krasinski in the ongoing Jack Ryan TV series on Amazon Prime. But the best that Clark has done thus far is show up as a supporting character in Ryan movies (played by Willem Dafoe in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears).
So Without Remorse provides a spotlight for both Clark and Jordan, but there’s nothing about this movie that suggests anything distinctive or interesting about the character. Although it was originally slated for a major theatrical release from Paramount, Without Remorse feels far more at home on Amazon Prime, and it’s easy to imagine Jordan’s Clark popping up on the next season of Jack Ryan, without any adjustment to his screen presence.
Screenwriters Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples take the title and little else from Clancy’s 1993 novel Without Remorse, updating Clark’s origin from the Vietnam War to the present day. Those updates are mostly cosmetic, though, and it’s not hard to imagine Without Remorse fitting alongside movies that were released around the same time as Clancy’s novel, including a few Jack Ryan installments. Jordan is a producer on Without Remorse, but his version of John Clark doesn’t have much of a personality beyond typical action-hero dedication to justice and loyalty. It’s especially disappointing following Jordan’s magnetic action performances in Black Panther and the Creed movies.
As in Clancy’s novel, John Clark starts out as John Kelly, not taking on the more familiar name until the end of the movie. John is an elite Navy SEAL on a mission in Aleppo, Syria, as Without Remorse begins, carrying out orders from weaselly CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell). Instead of encountering Syrian troops as expected, John’s team fights off Russian soldiers to rescue a CIA operative. Three months later, back in the U.S., members of John’s team are being picked off one by one, and he narrowly escapes his own assassination attempt, which takes the life of his wife Pam (Lauren London) and their unborn child.
Of course, he is then out for revenge, and unlike the ostensibly nerdy analyst Jack Ryan, John has no qualms about committing lots of violent acts. John’s former superior officer, Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), has his back, feeding him information about the Russian agent who got away from John’s house after killing Pam. John’s quest for vengeance involves a stint in jail, a mission to Russia, a whole bunch of interchangeable associates, and lots and lots of dead bodies.
It also involves the requisite conspiracy that goes all the way to the top, with both Ritter and seemingly sympathetic Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce) at the top of the list of people who are clearly not to be trusted. None of this is particularly surprising or exciting, and Jordan’s charisma only goes so far in selling Without Remorse’s terrible action-movie tough-guy dialogue.
“They’re gonna play by my rules now,” John says of the bad guys. When he’s making the case to be part of the covert team for a mission to Russia, he tells Greer and Clay, “You need somebody like me. And there’s nobody like me.” He might as well be Wolverine telling people he’s the best at what he does, for all the connection it has to reality.
Director Stefano Sollima is a veteran of Italian TV whose one previous English-language film is the underwhelming 2018 Sicario sequel Day of the Soldado, and he brings TV-level competence to Without Remorse. Much of the action is murky and chaotic, although Sollima stages one standout sequence that involves John, trapped in a jail cell, taking on a stream of heavily armed guards attempting to capture him. It’s the one moment when Without Remorse feels distinctive, and not just like an extended Jack Ryan spin-off or a copy of blockbuster thrillers from decades past.
That moment is disappointingly brief, though, and the climax is a protracted battle among mostly faceless characters, following a useless confrontation between John and the man he’s been seeking. Sollima casts oddball comedy star Brett Gelman as a villainous mastermind, and then completely squanders Gelman’s unique talents in favor of generic military conspiracy talking points.
The original deal for Without Remorse involved Jordan reprising the role of John Clark in a movie based on Clancy’s Rainbow Six, which has spawned a hugely popular video game series. It’s not clear whether that plan is still in place after Without Remorse’s move from Paramount to Amazon, but this movie still plays like a long-winded trailer for what fans really want to see. That point is hammered home in a mid-credits scene that rushes to undo events that just happened a few minutes earlier during the movie’s proper ending. John Clark may be one of Clancy’s most enduring creations, but the plug-and-play feel of Without Remorse only makes him anonymous and indistinct.
Starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Guy Pearce, Lauren London and Brett Gelman, Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse premieres Friday, April 30 on Amazon Prime.
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