But it does mean a lot rides on how long you're prepared to watch a guy crouch behind a wall. Gamers will recognize these visuals, and you may find they immerse you in the hero's peril, like it's you crouching behind that wall for some flimsy cover. Like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and the film's later action scenes often stick with Jordan as he's attacked from afar. Sheridan's co-writer, Will Staples, started out writing A flashlight rolling across a floor provides one of the film's tensest moments, and there's a bit where Kelly peels off his shirt and prepares for a fight that's just as riveting as the punch-up that follows.īut in the second half things get a bit muddier, with a long slog of dark firefights. The film ignites - literally - when Kelly's rage is channeled against a Russian bigwig, and it's in these flashes of inventive sadism that Without Remorse hints at being its own thing. Kelly's squad is summarily dispatched, his wife gets caught in the crossfire, yada yada let's go do some revenge. So Kelly comes home from war to be with his pregnant wife, who wants him to retire from the military, but he isn't sure, and blah blah even the filmmakers don't care about this bit. Jordan shoot the breeze in Without Remorse. And most clanging of all, the hero is motivated by the murder of his pregnant wife. The hero wakes up just in time to go ballistic on a kill team sneaking into his house.

Guest stars coldly eye each other across desks while quietly manipulating the lives of the men and women who work for them. All the slow-burning cinematography in the world can't disguise that Without Remorse is assembled almost entirely from creaky spy/action movie cliches.Ĭocky special ops dudes trade barbs with twitchy CIA agents in war zones. For all its lingering camerawork and spine-tingling music, this is still a film featuring characters named Hatchet, Dallas and Thunder. That's a classy pedigree behind the camera, but don't be fooled. Sheridan also wrote the Sicario movies, the second of which was directed by Sollima, and there's a strong Sicario vibe here: frowny geopolitical intrigue punctuated by bursts of action shot in an austere, slightly detached way. The script comes courtesy of Taylor Sheridan, who wrote the Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water and TV show Yellowstone. Without Remorse is directed with a steady eye by Stefano Sollima, who previously helmed gritty TV dramas Gomorrah and Suburra.

Tom clancy's no remorse