Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse’ on Amazon Prime, Starring Michael B. Jordan as the New Hope for the Cinematic Ryanverse

The title of Amazon Prime movie Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse isn’t supposed to be a sentence, but it sure could be one: The famed author of the Jack Ryan and other “Ryanverse” novels remorselessly releases — posthumously even, as his estate perpetuates the big-money franchise — yet another movie adaptation of his wildly popular espionage pageturners. This one, about Ryanverse Navy SEAL badass John Clark, has been in development since the mid-1990s, and finally comes to life thanks to producer-star Michael B. Jordan and co-scripter Taylor Sheridan (writer of Hell or High Water and Sicario, creator of TV’s Yellowstone). Paramount Pictures — who sold the film to Amazon after COVID scuttled its theatrical release — no doubt hopes the movie launches a modern Clancy film franchise to match ’90s smash hits like Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October. We’ll see about that.

TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: ALEPPO, SYRIA: There are some ops going on here, some SERIOUS f—ing OPS. A group of SEALs, led by John Clark (Jordan) and Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), infiltrate a stronghold for reasons and such and find out that they’re not fighting Syrians, but Russians. That wasn’t part of the deal, and the smug CIA prick who sent them in there, Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell), quips, “I don’t see any Russians.” Hmm. WASHINGTON, D.C., THREE MONTHS LATER: Clark says he’s going to leave the military and go into private security because it’s less dangerous; he sidles up to his extraordinarily pregnant wife Pam (Lauren London) and kisses the belly wherein lies their unborn daughter. These are precisely the types of scenes that occur moments before Pam gets killed, and therefore, moments later, four bad guys bust into the house and murder Pam in her sleep insert the third and fourth words of the movie title here.

But they failed to take out Clark. He got three of ’em before the fourth one put two bullets in Clark’s torso and escaped, leaving him to lie in a hospital bed dreaming of revenge. Turns out two of the other guys in the f—ing serious OPS mission got offed. Again, hmm. They were sent into that mission on false pretenses, and now this. Clark’s close pals with Lieutenant Commander Greer, who seeks an investigation, but it gets squashed by the smug CIA prick and defense secretary Clay (Guy Pearce). Hmm, I say, hmm. P.O.’d as heck, Clark starts his own one-man OPS so he can get to the bottom of this corruption, and it starts with smashing a tow truck into a car containing a Very Important Russian Guy then starting the car on fire then hopping into the car that’s on fire and having a conversation with the Very Important Russian Guy. Is it a heated conversation? Damn straight bruh!

So at this point it’s quite clear that Clark is officially a nothin’-to-lose-r. He runs around saying things like, “We served a country that don’t love us BACK” and “They brought that war to MY HOUSE” and “They’re gonna play by MY rules now.” He goes to jail, gets out of jail, fights hard, shoots hard, runs hard, swims hard, navigates dim back corridors of politics and Russian apartment buildings (hard!), and we hang with it for about 45 minutes. At about the 75-minute mark is when the convolutions get so convoluted we begin losing the plot. But maybe the action is so exciting that we don’t care too much? There’s always the hope.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Siege of Force, Force of Control, Controlled Enforcement, Enforced Extraction, Extraction of Power, Power of Assault, Assault of Malevolence, Malevolence of Constitution, Constitutional Defiance, Defiant Siege, Siege of Force II: Control of Assaultive Enforced Defiance and many other generic action movies I just made up.

Performance Worth Watching: Jordan delivers clenched-teeth speeches with the searing sincerity that translates well to action pictures (and sturdy dramas like Just Mercy and Fruitvale Station), but it’s hard to conjure up more than a lukewarm rah-rah for his shoddily written character. I still love the guy’s charisma, though — he pulls off his shirt and preps for a jail-cell confrontation like no one since Tom Hardy went full naked brawler in Bronson.

Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized to avoid spoilers, and for comedy’s sake: “I know you’re dead and all now, but don’t be a stranger.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I dunno, I almost feel bad describing the brutal murder of a pregnant woman with such flippancy, but Without Remorse treats such a horror like nothing more than a development to inspire the rest of the plot. There’s little sense of grief, loss, tragedy or anything else that might galvanize John Clark as a living, breathing character; we felt far more heartbroken for John Wick after his dog was killed. Clark is just a nigh-featureless action figure who has the inner life of a G.I. Joe doll still sealed in its package.

The film’s only relatively imaginative component is Stefano Sollima’s (Sicario: Day of the Soldado) direction; he skillfully conceives a few action sequences — including a plane crash on water that invokes Titanic spectacle for a minute, and I mean that as a compliment — that would be far more effective if we could better comprehend the murky revenge-slash-conspiracy-thriller plot that never commits to either tack, resulting in a who-gives-a-crap origin story for John Clark, Potential Franchise Anchor. It’s just sloppy spy shit, and Wick wastes it in the revenge-story sweepstakes. Not that we really gave too much of a crap about the spy shit in the Bournes or the recent Mission: Impossibles, but the former franchise ups the ante in the character department and the latter pins us down with its exhilarating intensity and wildly creative set pieces.

Without Remorse is too slick to be pulpy, too clumsily plotted to be quality escapism and too thin on character to be substantive.

Without Remorse is too slick to be pulpy, too clumsily plotted to be quality escapism and too thin on character to be substantive. Props to Jordan for his effort to sustain some command presence, but the movie around him lacks the defining action-movie characteristics to put it anywhere but firmly in the middle of the genre pack.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse is underwhelming, mostly coasting on the (occasionally dubious) cred of the Clancy brand. It’s better than 2014’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, but that’s not saying much. Maybe it’s fine for diehard Ryanversers, but the rest of us should watch Extraction or that last few M:Is instead.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Tom Clancy's Without Remorse on Amazon Prime