John Clark, a Navy SEAL, goes on a path to avenge his wife’s murder only to find himself inside of a larger conspiracy.
Audiences were first introduced to the big-screen iteration of John Clark in the 1994 Jack Ryan thriller, “Clear and Present Danger,” starring Harrison Ford as Ryan and Willem Dafoe in the role of Clark. Eight years later, Clark was portrayed by Liev Schreiber to Ben Affleck’s Jack Ryan but “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” introduces us to Clark when he was a Navy SEAL and went by the name John Kelly, and before he joined the CIA.
John Kelly (Michael B. Jordan) and his elite Navy SEAL team are sent into war-torn Syria to rescue a CIA agent who has been taken hostage. John and his team quickly discover the operative and shoot their way out but upon retrieving him, John realizes that his captors were Russian and not rebels from the region, as they were led to believe. Three months later, back home in the US, John and his pregnant wife Pam (Lauren London) are preparing for the birth of their baby daughter. One night, several of John’s fellow Navy SEALs are killed simultaneously, with John’s house being attacked at the same time. He manages to kill all of the insurgents except for one but manages to get a look at his face before he escapes. John is rushed to the hospital in serious condition and barely survives but upon waking, he is told that his wife and unborn baby didn’t survive.
When CIA officer Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) discloses to Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay (Guy Pearce) that the Navy SEALs were assassinated by Russian operatives in retaliation for the murder of their comrades on John Kelly’s earlier mission, Clay is determined to exact vengeance. After John is released from the hospital, he tracks down the corrupt Russian official, Andre Vaseliev (Merab Ninidze), who resides at the Russian Consulate and learns that he was the person responsible for issuing the passports for his wife’s killer and before shooting him, manages to secure the name of the person responsible for the attacks: Victor Rykov (Brett Gelman).
Arrested and sent to prison for the killing of Vaseliev, he informs his friend and fellow SEAL, Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), that he has information he extracted from Vaseliev before he was killed and is willing to trade for his release so he can enter Russia and take down Rykov. Secretary of Defense Thomas Clay sets up a meeting with Ritter, Greer, and John and upon learning of John’s new information, Ritter informs Clay that his data is incorrect because Rykov is supposed to be dead. Clay assembles a new team for a covert mission into Russia but he requests that Rykov be brought back alive for questioning. Clay insists that John goes with them, much to Greer’s disapproval, stating he is too blinded by revenge to be able to follow orders accordingly but Clay stands firm that he goes with them.
With the new team assembled, the mission begins but their plane is shot down over Russian airspace and crashes into the Barents Sea. They survive the crash but are now presumed dead. John insists that’s a good thing because now they can move forward with their assignment hassle-free. With their equipment salvaged by John from the remnants of the plane, they make their way to Murmansk and discover Ritter at the safe house, accompanied by two Russian agents. Believing they were set up, Ritter explains that they thought they were dead after their plane was shot down and hired two outside operatives who were going to continue their mission. When they infiltrate the building that Rykov is occupying, John manages to trap the team in a corridor and makes his way to Rykov’s room alone, with the intent of killing him but when he arrives, Rykov has a bomb strapped to his chest. Before detonating, he divulges chilling information to John that spans the corridors of Washington, and that they are both just pawns in a deadly and forthcoming war. Armed with this new intelligence, John must make his way back to the US and inform Clay, before it’s too late.
“Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” sets the stage for future installments and establishes the characters firmly in place. Like the Jack Ryan series before it, should they move forward and turn John Clark into a TV series, it will only be a matter of time before the inevitable Jack Ryan/John Clark crossover. And even though both characters have met onscreen before in the aforementioned titles and also in book form, it would more than likely be their first time meeting each other, as both this adaptation and the Jack Ryan series on Amazon, introduces both characters early on in their lives and careers. It would also make perfect sense for John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan to appear, instead of hiring a new actor to play the role simply for a crossover event.
The acting is solid but the action set-pieces are uninspired. There is nothing here you haven’t seen a thousand times before in better-produced movies and TV shows. Clark’s family is killed and he wants vengeance and will stop at nothing to seize that opportunity. That was even the central narrative for “Patriot Games” which was produced to much better effect. In the end, “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” delivers a new take on an old character in the vast Tom Clancy Universe, and it has been reported that Michael B. Jordan will reprise his John Clark character for an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six,” which centers on a fictional international counter-terrorist unit. That sounds more promising but in the meantime, if you just want some good old-fashioned action and espionage, then “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” will deliver.
Available to stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video Friday, April 30th
