Without Remorse

A generic shoot-'em-up that Hollywood used to do with Westerns ever since they began making movies. It doesn't matter that there's the military, espionage and geopolitical conspiracies involved in the Tom Clancy variation on the formula; it's always the same thing. The baddie and his red herring are so obvious that one of them might as well be wearing a black hat. But, sure, the action is standard, if darkly lit, and Michael B. Jordan fits the part of a muscular star to recognizably pose between the rest of the interchangeable tropes. Maybe you'll even find "Without Remorse" a bit fun with him not playing by the rules, out for revenge as he is. For crying out loud, we even get a mid-credits scene setting up a franchise.

When a movie is this dull, I start desperately looking for something to be worth my attention. One character makes a point regarding the Cold War having brought Americans together, whereas now without a common enemy one half sees the other half as the enemy. That comes too late to matter, though. There's also the business of Jordan's character telling his enemies to say his murdered wife's name. That got me thinking about the SayHerName campaign, but the picture doesn't do anything with its star being an African American, and in one sequence he takes out an entire squad of Russian police officers who are just doing their jobs. So, yeah, there's nothing here.