The Screen Scene: Without Remorse

WWLP Television ^ | May 5, 2021 | Scott Phillips

[L.A.Justice]

THE SCREEN SCENE (WRBL): It’s easy to forget that Tom Clancy was a major brand in the 1980s and 90s. His novels topped the bestseller lists. The literary Mount Rushmore of the era was Stephen King, John Grisham and Clancy. Even President Ronald Reagan gave a blurb review for the paperback of the submarine warfare thriller, The Hunt for Red October.

In the 1990s the Jack Ryan films, starring Alec Baldwin and then Harrison Ford as the family man turned spy, blew up the box office. But following Clancy’s death in 2013, his brand began to fade. The Clancy estate found a variety of coauthors to carry on the publishing empire, but the film adaptations mostly ground to a halt.

Now Amazon is attempting to relaunch an arm of the Clancy franchise, special forces operative John Kelly a/k/a John Clark. Portrayed by Willem Dafoe in 1994’s Clear and Present Danger and by Liev Schreiber in 2002’s The Sum of All Fears, Clark has been sitting on the Intellectual Property shelf for nearly twenty years. John Kelly is no longer a Vietnam vet. He’s a modern-day special forces soldier played by Michael B. Jordan (Creed, Black Panther) who is no stranger to the world of franchise films.

This latest reboot, Without Remorse, finds Navy SEAL John Kelly on the verge of retirement. He lives in a beautiful house in the suburbs. (Who knew the military paid so well?) He has a beautiful wife who’s expecting their first child. So naturally Kelly goes on one last mission, everything goes perfectly and the Kelly family walks off into the sunset.

No chance. This is the first film in a potential Amazon franchise. We’ve all seen enough action films featuring elite soldiers. It’s a lonely path for those cinematic heroes, and their personal lives are usually in a shambles. As you would expect, that one last mission goes horribly wrong and leaves Kelly on a Russian hit list. In short order, the enemy arrives to get even with Kelly’s SEAL team.

Without Remorse is not a low budget attempt to cash in on its popular source material. It’s not a cheap, straight to VOD film. The money is on the screen, as they like to say in the film business. You also have an A-list young star in the lead with Jordan. He more than has the acting chops to bring credibility to a character who could be a cardboard cutout in lesser hands. The weakness to the film is the screenplay delivered by Taylor Sheridan, and that’s hard for me to believe. Sheridan wrote the screenplay for Sicario and the 2016 neo-Western Hell or High Water, a modern crime classic. So it’s surprising Without Remorse has so many gaps in the storytelling. It plays like a series of plot beats with no connective tissue. Maybe there was a far better draft that got watered down by “notes” from Amazon executives, but the version that survived is a giant pile of… clichés.

After the last round is fired and the last car explodes, Without Remorse proves itself to be “good enough.” That’s not exactly a rave review, but the film isn’t worthy of high praise. It’s a reboot of a character that first appeared nearly thirty years ago, and there are going to be some growing pains along the way. If you are a fan of the Tom Clancy world of spies and special ops soldiers, this film will keep you entertained. If this isn’t your usual cinematic bag, there’s nothing about Without Remorse that will change your mind.

Without Remorse is currently playing on Amazon Prime.

[CW_Conservative]

But following Clancy’s death in 2013, his brand began to fade. The Clancy estate found a variety of coauthors to carry on the publishing empire, but the film adaptations mostly ground to a halt.

Clancy's name is the lead title for some of the greatest video games ever made. Games still hugely popular today. Rainbow Six is the supposed movie sequel to Without Remorse and their still releasing games about it.

[Quentin Quarantino]

Amazon. Without Remorse.

They butchered a great book and turned it into a predictable and boring run of the mill, woke TV show.

They did this without remorse.

This movie is utter garbage.

[wbarmy]

Without Remorse is my favorite Clancy book and probably on my top ten books of all time. The books I would want to be stuck on an island with.

The character of John Clark is exactly like some of the Vietnam Vets I knew (at least their image of themselves), and his actions toward the drug dealers was the dream of quite a few military men who saw their neighborhoods turn into trash over the years.

[silent_jonny]

Have you read the novel WITHOUT REMORSE?

Yes. I loved it at the time I read it ('94 or '95).

Tom Clancy was a fan of "Magnum PI" and in the early '90s, he and Tom Selleck were working together to make a series of Magnum feature films. Apparently the two Toms put a lot of work into this, but the studio(s) dragged their feet and the small window of opportunity closed.

I'm guessing Clancy reworked the Magnum screenplays into "Without Remorse".

It was a good fit. John Kelly/Clark is essentially Magnum, a combat veteran who can drift between the civilian world and the military world. And Clark was already an established character in Clancy's novels.

The plot borrows heavily from several Magnum episodes--one in particular called "Distant Relative" seems to be the blueprint Clancy used for the vigilante side of John's story.

[EEGator]

Race bothers me now, as I have Negro fatigue...

[Bikkuri]

Ok, I do vaguely remember that one. (Book, for sure, but movie, not so much). Its been awhile :D

[cyclotic]

I have two Naval Academy Press copies of The Hunt for Red October.

And they just completely destroyed the John Clark character in Without Remorse (movie)

I especially liked the female SEAL team commander who was introduced in the first five minutes.

[pierrem15]

I agree with you that pushing the race/gender stuff can quickly become distracting, and that I’m now sensitive to it being pushed down my throat. But it’s the “distracting” wokescold part, and not the race/gender that gets me, and in this case, it was the hoary ‘evil defense corporation US government conspiracy’ that triggered the gag reflex.

[Magnum44]

I’m waiting for Jack Carr’s ‘Terminal List’ to comes out on Amazon. I hope they stick to the book and dont screw it up.

[bravo whiskey]

“What was unrealistic for you? As a USMC officer in the 1970’s I studied the stopping of massive Soviet tank forces coming through the Fulda Gap, and other scenarios portrayed in the book. I found Red Storm Rising VERY realistic. And an enjoyable read.”

I agree. I was an armor officer in the Fulda Gap area in the late ‘70s and a small unit tactical training consultant in the ‘80s.
Loved RED STORM RISING as well as both THE THIRD WORLD WAR books. Also an avid wargamer and reader. We fought NATO paper battles and digital battles many times, ground and naval.

[doorgunner69]

No other Clancy book was quite like it.

That was the Larry Bond contribution.

[728b]

I have read it and this movie is only 2% similar. Name and lost loved one.

[disclaimer]

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, meaning Seal Team Six, was about a terrorist group's plan to spread Ebola to kill a large population... but the catch was, it wasn't the Ebola that would actually do the major killing, it was the vaccine that everyone was scared into taking that killed them slowly.

Written in 1998, Tom Clancy was later died of a heart attack, as was the doctor who performed his autopsy days afterwards.

As most Tom Clancy fans know, the CIA can heart attack those they want out of the way.

Great fiction.

[728b]

Also, they could never make Without Remorse today because Clark kills drug dealers. Hollywood would make the criminals the heroes.

[728b]

Not to mention that the Ebola virus was engineered in a lab.

One of the best endings I have ever read.

[BwanaNdege]

Thanks for the confirmation!

I was an 81 mortars RO/FO in Vietnam and actually rode an M-48, about 5 clicks from My Lai, though no one had heard of Lt Calley at the time.

Yep, rode that tank right into the center of a minefield. Fun, fun fun!

Later, I got a commission and learned how to “beat the air into submission” with a Sikorsky CH-53D. Never served in Europe, but did war games in Korea, mostly as an Air Liaison Officer with an Arty Battalion.

I really liked Clancy’s books. Too bad Hollywood has to mess up anything they touch.

[Rebelbase]

The book was excellent. This recent film abomination was a pathetic excuse for entertainment. I was very painful to watch.