Form fails formula in the new action movie Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse (Amazon Prime, April 30), which makes a hash of its considerable pedigree. As the title indicates, the film is based on a novel by the late legend of bestselling CIA yarns, specifically a 1993 volume that offers a brutal origin story for a character met in previous Clancy adventures. It’s been a while since a Clancyverse movie has muscled its way into the world, so perhaps it was time for a return to his brand of geopolitical maneuvering and single-man might.
A new era would need a new Clancy hero, away from the (supposed) rumpled competence of Jack Ryan, who is currently played, on a hit Amazon series, by John Krasinski. Someone murkier was necessary for a cool, shivery action movie, thus enter John Kelly, the SEAL turned rogue operative who is quicker to violence than golden-boy Ryan and is laden with the pathos of tragic motivation. Who better to bring that steely determination to the role than Michael B. Jordan, a star for this era who won hearts and minds as the ostensible villain in Black Panther after emotionally rich turns in Fruitvale Station and Creed.
To run things, Amazon tapped Stefano Sollima, who has directed episodes of the hard-nosed Southern Italian crime drama Gomorrah, and helmed the “let’s get right to the killing” Sicario sequel, Day of the Soldado. He’s got pizazz, an eye for crunching realistic violence, and a Euro sensibility that ought to suit a Clancy tale’s globetrotting. All the pieces were arrayed nicely.
So what happened? Well, Without Remorse could be as bad as it is because the film has strayed so far from the plot of the book. It eschews the revenge against drug dealers and sex traffickers and instead lazily maps out a shadowy campaign to start World War III. The screenplay, by Will Staples and Oscar-nominated crime guy Taylor Sheridan, is a muddle of clichéd tough-guy talk and conspiracy theory. The killing of John Kelly’s wife, which sparks the whole grim escapade, is done cruelly, though it is unfortunately the best-staged sequence in the film. What follows is a programmatic series of twists and reveals, punctuated with leaden action scenes all filmed dark and soupy and limp by Sollima.
It’s also a problem that all of Jordan’s persuasive appeal has been muted to nothing in service of the movie’s macho-stoic aspirations. Jordan delivers flat lines flatly—which isn’t really his fault, I suppose. Whoever is to blame for it, though, Without Remorse decidedly does not provide the movie-star evolution that a standalone action-hero role like this is supposed to for a young actor on the rise. Maybe that idea itself is as dated as Clancy’s work, so Jordan is stuck playing out the trajectory of stars twice his age. Then again, Chris Hemsworth recently found streaming success outside the Marvel-verse in the gnarly action film Extraction. Jordan probably just needs better material, a script and a character that more ably showcase his capacity for empathetic angst and sly playfulness.
Much of Without Remorse feels too much like actors playing soldier dress-up. Which all action movies are to some extent, but the good ones are better at hiding the artifice, or letting us happily lean into it. Without Remorse’s flimsy gravitas makes the pretense seem that much sillier. Jordan falls victim to that undertow, as do his co-stars. Jamie Bell, as a shifty CIA operative, manages to find some credible notes to play, even if he’s ultimately not given anything interesting to do. But Jodie Turner-Smith—as a military officer and the niece of Clancy mainstay character James Greer—seizes up. She gives a wooden performance to match the film’s stale tenor; her scenes slow an already dull movie to a halt. Not much deceleration was needed, though.
The politics of the film are probably not worth going into, but if I’m parsing the movie correctly, it is generally anti-war but pro-clandestine, extrajudicial killing as long as it’s done by the right people. (Meaning, no-nonsense Americans with assumed moral clarity.) Only, the main killing machine we see here is fueled by personal grief, by a craving for revenge, which doesn’t exactly make the best case for the reasoned, practical, dispassionate surgical striking that the movie—and, in some senses, the Clancy-verse—is perhaps advocating for. Or maybe it’s not doing that at all! Who can tell through the movie’s pallid gloom.
Best to move past Without Remorse. assured that Jordan will find another, more fitting star vehicle for himself. Maybe one that’s a bit hipper to the mores and styles of the present day, and is more willing to let its lead express something beyond the wordless violence of so much canned fury.
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April 30, 2021 at 12:22AM
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