If you loved the cynical, grim nihilism and fascistic wet dream foulness of “Sicario: Day Of The Soldado,” you’re probably going to love Amazon’s “Without Remorse.” Made by the same writing/directing pair, filmmaker Stefano Sollima (the Italian “Gomorrah” TV series) and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (“Sicario,” “Hell or High Water”), “Without Remorse” feels like a CIA Black Ops recruitment tool—making ruthless assassinations of faceless foreign nationals seem efficiently slick and badass—for aspiring jarheads and military contractors. Worse, given that it’s based on a famous Tom Clancy book (the full title of the film is “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse”), it feels like a dated relic of the Cold War American/Russian spy era with a heaping dose of the merciless and repugnant tone of the later-era “Rambo” films slathered on top. Trump-era election deniers, militia members, and those who stormed the capitol on January 6 will likely love its no-nonsense approach and distrust of the government, which favors the wild lone wolf and psycho gunman instead.
Starring a ferocious Michael B. Jordan, who never lets up for better and for worse, as John Kelly (eventually John Clark under a new guise), a Senior Chief U.S. Navy SEAL, essentially a lean, mean cold-blooded killing machine. The film opens up with Clark’s elite kill squad in a war-torn region of Syria, on a CIA operation to rescue a hostage. But CIA officer Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) hasn’t told him the full story, and they are greeted by hostile ex-Russian military forces, which almost make the mission go south. Months later, the Russians want payback, and in an orchestrated attack, the entire team is hit by a squad of Russian assassins. The collateral damage is Clark’s wife Pam (Lauren London), murdered in the assault that leaves the protagonist clinging for life.
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Clark’s friend and former SEAL team member Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), Ritter, and Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce) discuss response options. Still, ultimately, the CIA decides to stand down and call it even. This is the point and excuse that lets Jordan’s Clark character go berserk with a bloodlust for revenge that feels absolutely unremitting. From there, Clark goes on all kinds of rampages, leaving a trail of dead bodies, his ass in jail, and then a brief pardon that takes him to Russia on a clandestine mission to find the bad guys.
In Clancy’s pro-military, pro-U.S. government novels, American might is right. But with Sheridan as the screenwriter, times have changed and “Without Remorse” shifts into more shady government conspiratorial territory. Either way, it’s grimdark for the military-industrial complex, bleak, cynical, utterly humorless, and totally unpleasant. “Without Remorse” is also poorly paced and slow. Sollima and Sheridan already shaped “Sicario 2” like the pilot episode of a new spin-off TV series, and much of that idea applies to “Without Remorse” too; only the TV-like plotting just bogs down the entire story, even when it tries to build character.
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In that regard, it totally fails. Jordan’s Clark is a man who has nothing to lose but is a one-note of ruthless, efficient killing and the will to cross every single line of justice and morality to achieve his goals. Sollima crafts good action, and ZipTieGuy cosplayers, will probably adore the taut and frenetic execution of such sequences. Still, the second half of the film feels like one long relentless, frantic shoot-out that never lets up. And Jordan is totally game to be this fierce action star, but he’s barely recognizably as a person. All the humanity, charisma, and captivating presence that he’s shown in similarly intense films like the “Creed” films are non-existent. Clark, Jordan, and the entire film just feel repellantly brutal, violent, and unremitting its vicious journey to achieve “justice” without any guilt.
“You know who won world War II?” one antagonist says in a long monologue close to the end of the film. “Economists, all that spending raised the country out of poverty and freed the world from tyranny.” Yes, that’s bad guys being bad guys, but one can’t help but wonder just how much of this worldview is part of the perspective of the filmmakers.
There’s lots of talk about “patriots” in the film, a holdover from Clancy’s novels—those in the government or the military who have the fortitude to “defend” the nation—but it also hews frighteningly close to the conservative idea of only patriots, not dissidents, being present at the Capitol on January 6. They just really cared about our country, obviously, and this misguided, scary psyche seems to pervade Sollima’s film, too, with its queasy notions of morality, justice, and patriotism. Sheridan and Clancy also play with the notions of pawns and kings; foot soldiers like Clark who do the bidding of the government, but who can you really trust, the movie asks, making the suits the bad guys ultimately and the maverick the hero (only for him to align with the “good” version of the suits in the end).
Finally, “Without Remorse” has the gall to end with a post-credits scene that essentially tells you all you need to know about this cynical effort: it’s the origin story prequel of John Kelly (now John Clark, as he lives like an Ethan Hunt-like ghost off the grid) and it’s here to set up a “Rainbow Six” franchise aka, a Black Op, covert, government-sanctioned team of assassins (sorry, heroes), who are likely going to be set to hot spots all over the globe to kill Black, Brown and Asian people.
Ultimately, put its questionable politics aside, “Without Remorse,” even as a simplistic action thriller is joyless and lifeless, an arid space of empty macho bullshit with a lead character who is the equivalent of a bulging forehead veins meme. Without too many spoilers, “Without Remorse” posits that the cold war might have been a good thing, and without enemies like Russia, trigger-happy America and its psychotic need for villains will turn on each other and eat themselves. That’s not a completely off suggestion, sadly, and frankly, given the state of where things are, but it doesn’t mean I ever want to inhabit a grisly cinematic worldview with these gruesome people ever again. [D]
“Without Remorse” arrives on Amazon Prime Video on April 30.