Review: In 'Without Remorse,' Michael B. Jordan faces assassins in his house and hamfisted writing in the script

Before watching “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,” I was dubious of the idea of trying to kickstart another franchise based on Clancy’s stories of espionage and military strikes. After watching it, I’m still not convinced — but I know that casting Michael B. Jordan as the protagonist is a step in the right direction.

Jordan plays John Kelly, who we meet as a Navy SEAL, one of an elite squad who can go into any combat situation with precision, stealth and lethal efficiency. The problem Kelly and his team face, while on a mission in Syria that kicks off the movie, is that their weaselly CIA liaison, Ritter (Jamie Bell), hasn’t told them what the real objective is. Even so, Kelly and the team kill the apparent bad guys and, mostly, make it home alive.

Home, for Kelly, means his wife, Pam (Lauren London), who is eight months’ pregnant. But Kelly’s hopes for domestic bliss and fatherhood are dashed one night, when assassins get into his house and murder Pam. That same night, some of Kelly’s SEAL teammates are also killed — leading their boss, Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), to suspect a link to that last mission in Syria.

Kelly wants revenge, and applies his SEAL skills to attack a Russian diplomat (Merab Ninidze, last seen in “The Courier”) to get the information he wants. This puts Kelly in prison — but that’s a short side trip, because the powers that be, including Ritter and Defense Secretary Lacy (Guy Pearce), see the value in setting a vengeance-seeking weapon like Kelly loose on their apparent common enemy.

Italian director Stefano Sollima (“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”) stages some brutally effective combat and one-on-one sequences. He understands the importance of establishing the geography of an action scene, and using the space to let the combatants attack and defend.

But when the characters have to talk? Oh brother. Clancy was never a subtle writer, between the armaments and machismo, and writers Taylor Sheridan (“Hell or High Water”) and Will Staples (whose credits are mostly in video games, like “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3”) do little to rein in those impulses.

Jordan, however, elevates the film with his intensity and screen presence, even when some moments in the film feel like an alternative origin story for Erik Killmonger, Jordan’s villain character in “Black Panther.” “Without Remorse” was intended to be one of Paramount’s 2020 tentpoles, before COVID-19 shuffled every studio’s movie plans — and was designed as a franchise starter, the bloodier counterpart to Clancy’s Jack Ryan books. It’s unclear if Amazon, which is streaming this film, has sequel aspirations for John Kelly, but if they did, Jordan would be a strong, charismatic actor to build a franchise around.

——

‘Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse’

★★1/2

Available for streaming, beginning Friday, April 30, on Prime Video. Rated R for violence. Running time: 110 minutes.