Without Remorse: Film Review

Cast: Michael B Jordan, Jamie Bell, 

Director: Stefan Sollima

Back in the 90s, the conspiracy thriller was all the rage, fuelled by the likes of Patriot Games and John Grisham.

So it's both a good and bad thing to report that Amazon Prime Video's Without Remorse goes back to those roots, with nary a knowing wink nor a sense of anything but dourness.

Creed's Michael B Jordan is John Clark, an elite Navy SEAL, who begins the film as a hero as part of a team helping take down bad guys and rescue a hostage in Aleppo in Syria. But within moments, that heroism is drowned in a hail of bullets as Clark's squad is wiped out on home soil in a series of targeted assassinations.

Clark himself barely escapes, but his pregnant wife does not - and so, obviously, Clark sets out on a mission to avenge her death, uncovering a conspiracy aimed at throwing Russia and the US square into each other's sights.

Without Remorse is not without its selling points.

Firstly, there's Jordan himself, who conveys his Clark with a steely determination and watchability that continues to solidify his star status. Yet the script rarely calls on Jordan to do much - except for one scene which feels like it's ripped from a Creed in jail story we've yet to see.

Secondly, Sicario 2's Sollima does manage to incorporate some tense moments in an otherwise generic and borderline dull movie. An early home invasion, a sequence where Clark firebombs a car then gets in for interrogation, and a plane attack all bring a certain amount of edge of the seat action to a script that rarely deserves it.

While Without Remorse has all the hallmarks of a Tom Clancy story - taut action, conspiracy, and an overly obvious baddie who turns out not to be - the film has the audacity to jettison all of that for a by-the-numbers film that plods on, rather than injecting suspense directly into your eyeballs.

Whereas Jack Ryan in all his iterations had a feeling of uncertainty, the years that have passed have not really been kind to this sort of formulaic rote revenge story. Whether it's the fact Jordan's character simply doesn't feel wronged enough to warrant it, or the script gives little time to a pregnant wife who's only there to be killed to fuel some tragedy, it feels like Without Remorse is an undercooked affair, throwing its emotional heft away at the start of the film without caring and then demanding you care, simply because you should, and not because the film's earned it.

All in all, Without Remorse is solid enough as background fare, but as a film for 2021, it feels too dour and too familiar to be as engaging as it should be. There's nothing wrong with the darkness if it's indulged more, but Without Remorse feels too scared to go as bleak as it could - and as it should.

Without Remorse is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.