Without Remorse

"You know you've messed up when they send a motorcade."

"Buddy, they're gonna write songs about all the shit you've messed up."

John Clark's a killer of bad men. A solver of problems. A one man army. People see the results of his work but never his face. He gets it done. Cleanly, quietly, efficiently. He's been around for a while. 21 novels to be exact, 13 of which were written by Tom Clancy. He's popped up in two films as well. In Clear And Present Danger he was played by Willem Dafoe and in The Sum Of All Fears Liev Schreiber nabbed the role. Both times he was supporting character and finally he's got his own film and this time it's Michael B. Jordan playing the lead. He's great in the part. It's a pity that the rest of the film doesn't keep up with him.

Senior Chief John Kelly (Clarke later). Navy Seal. Tough as nails. Family man. The story opens with him leading a mission to Syria alongside Lieutenant Commander Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith) to rescue a kidnapped CIA operative from ISIS soldiers. The mission's a bloody success but something's off. The ISIS soldiers are actually Russian and Russia doesn't react well to it's own dying on foreign soil. Payback's required, Kelly's squad is in their crosshairs and collateral damage is a tragic side effect. Now Kelly has only one thing on his mind and it isn't peaceful reconciliation.

The first half of this sets the bar high. It sketches out it's main characters briskly and effectively. Jordan and Turner-Smith play off each other well. It's dotted with well crafted, bone crunching action sequences, two of which (flooding plane and burning car) will linger long in memory and it's story of revenge, while familiar, feels muscular and vicious and then the second half rocks up packed with murky, generic gunfights, faceless goons and twists you'll see coming from a million miles away and it turns what should have been a wicked first installment in a long running franchise into the dictionary definition of MEH.

It's annoying. Seeing Black actors headlining big action films is always exciting, the raw material is there, the talent is most definitely there and this is what we end up with. Jordan in the last few years revived the Rocky series to stunning effect and with him and director Stefano Sollima in the mix we should have gotten gold. Sollima, the man behind the amazing Italian TV shows Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero is a dab hand at lacing his work with gritty unpredictability and while his fingerprints are clear over Without Remorse's first half they vanish as soon as bad guys with aims worse than stormtroopers start to fill the screen in the second hour. The book it's based on can't be held to account here by the way as it's been massively reworked in the transition from page to screen.

Michael B. Jordan has signed up to play the lead in one more film, an adaption of the Clancy novel Rainbow Six. Here's hoping who ever makes it takes a braver, more exciting approach to the source material. Jordan's a powerful performer, as believable pinning two enemies together with a knife before headshotting both of them as he is contorting himself in grief. He deserves a better film. You get the feeling Paramount (who made this before selling it to Amazon) were playing safe, creating an opening installment designed to appeal to all and alienate none. These days, when every film is potentially the start of a franchise, it more often than not leads to a bland experience for us.

Without Remorse is streaming online now. Jordan's a mighty lead but his good work is blunted by a too safe approach in the latter half.