We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
WITHOUT REMORSE (2021)
A faithful adaptation of author Tom Clancy’s 1993 novel Without Remorse would have been set in the 1970s, and could have been a badass throwback to the drive-in / grindhouse era. The story centered on former Navy SEAL John Kelly, who wages a personal war against organized crime in Baltimore to avenge a prostitute he befriended before she was murdered. Kelly’s rampage of revenge is disrupted when he’s sent over to Vietnam to rescue POWs – which isn’t too much of a detour, because the criminals in Baltimore are part of a scheme to smuggle heroin out of Vietnam in the bodies of fallen soldiers. Without Remorse was a long book, 639 pages, so the story would have to be condensed, but even with that taken into account it’s baffling that the adaptation spent twenty-five years in development hell before it finally made its way into production. Over the years, filmmakers like John Milius, Christopher McQuarrie, and John Singleton were up for the directing job, and actors like Keanu Reeves, Joaquin Phoenix, and Tom Hardy were offered the role of Kelly. Laurence Fishburne and Gary Sinise were attached to one version of the project, another version was going to include Kevin Costner as his character from Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. But Without Remorse just couldn’t get made.
When an adaptation finally did go into production, it wasn’t much of an adaptation anymore. The Without Remorse that was released through Amazon in 2021 largely disregards the story of Clancy’s novel. There is no prostitute, no criminal organization in Baltimore, no mission to Vietnam. Directed by Stefano Sollima from a screenplay by Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples, the movie is, for the most part, just a random action movie that happens to share a title with Clancy’s book.
Michael B. Jordan stars as Navy SEAL John Kelly, introduced while carrying out a mission to save a CIA operative who has been captured by members of the Russian military in Syria. When Kelly and his team return home, Russian agents start picking off members of the team one-by-one in a sequence that’s reminiscent of Commando. When they reach Kelly, they manage to kill his pregnant wife Pam (Lauren London), but only injure him, and he kills some of them. One of the assassins, Victor Rykov (Brett Gelman) is able to escape back to Russia, but Kelly joins Lt. Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith) and the CIA’s Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) on a mission to infiltrate Rykov’s homeland and get to him.
Of course, the mission doesn’t go as planned. There are double crosses, hidden agendas, and the possibility that all this back-and-forth between American soldiers and Russian agents could kick off a war. But while there are some big action moments, what the movie really comes down to is an extended shootout sequence that’s set inside a damaged building. It’s surprisingly low-key, and not all that impressive. So in a way, it’s fitting that plans changed for Without Remorse between production and release. It was going to be a theatrical release from Paramount, but when the pandemic hit they sold it off to the Amazon streaming service. A streaming release was better for this one.
So we finally got a Without Remorse movie, and it turned out to be a decent, albeit slightly underwhelming, action flick. But here’s hoping we’ll get a more faithful adaptation down the line.
BEAST (2022)
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur from a screenplay by Ryan Engle (working from a story crafted by Jaime Primak Sullivan), Beast is a movie I was sold on as soon as I heard it was going to star Idris Elba as a man trying to survive an encounter with a man-eating rogue lion. “Idris Elba vs. a lion”? There’s no way I was going to miss that – and that was even before I saw a trailer that promised the movie would be showing us the sight of Elba punching the rampaging lion!
Elba’s character is Dr. Nate Samuels, who travels to South Africa with his young daughters Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries) in an effort to reconnect after their family has been torn apart. First by the separation of Nate and his wife, and then by the death of his estranged wife, who was diagnosed with cancer after the separation. Nate’s wife was from Africa, so it’s the perfect place for this family to come back together while mourning their lost member. But this journey also puts them on a collision course with a lion that has gone on a killing spree after poachers killed its tribe.
There isn’t anything mind-blowing about Beast, it’s a pretty typical “nature run amok” movie, but it does have a good amount of action and thrills. The lion attacks the Samuels and their pal Martin (Sharlto Copley) with around an hour of the movie’s 93 minute running left, and the characters spend the entire rest of the film fighting to survive encounters with the lion and get out of its territory. There’s also a run-in with poachers along the way, which adds some extra tension and increases the body count. The situation gets so desperate that, yes, Nate does engage the lion in a fistfight... which doesn’t go very well for him, despite the fact that he’s played by Idris Elba.
If you like this sort of movie, this one is well worth spending 93 minutes on. It’s not on the level of something like Jaws, but it’s better than a lot of the nature run amok movies we get.
BULLET TRAIN (2022)
Stuntman David Leitch transitioned into a directing career by co-directing (and going uncredited on) John Wick. Since then, he has directed Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw... and with his latest movie Bullet Train, he delivers exactly the kind of action-packed insanity viewers have come to expect from a David Leitch movie, with this one leaning more in the direction of Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw than John Wick and Atomic Blonde.
Fitting for the title, this movie takes place almost entirely on a bullet train that’s making its way across Japan – a train that happens have several professional assassins among its passengers. Brad Pitt, who Leitch doubled for multiple times during his stunt days, plays the unlucky Ladybug, who has been tasked by his handler (Sandra Bullock, mostly heard over the phone) to retrieve a briefcase from the train. Double act Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) and Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) are on the train to take that briefcase and a character called The Son (Logan Lerman) to a specific location. But soon The Son is dead, with madness and more bloodshed ensuing. Along the way we meet more characters like The Prince (Joey King), The Elder (Hiroyuki Sanada), The Wolf (Benito A. Martinez Ocasio), The Hornet (Zazie Beetz), and The White Death (Michael Shannon).
Bullet Train has plenty of fun action sequences and a nice sense of humor, but it’s so nuts and over-the-top that it also starts to become somewhat exhausting. I found that the movie had worn out its welcome long before the end credits started to roll, but I kept watching because I was invested in seeing how it was all going to play out. Even though I was wishing it would play out in less time than it was taking.
The screenplay by Zak Olkewicz (based on the novel Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka) allows for the actors to play a lot of humorous moments between – and sometimes even during – the scenes of violence and bloodshed, and the whole cast did a fine job of bringing their characters to life. The fact that the song “I Just Want to Celebrate” by Rare Earth plays over the end credits gives you a good idea of what the tone of the film is. At one time Antoine Fuqua was planning to direct Bullet Train as a serious thriller along the lines of Die Hard, but in the hands of Leitch it became an amusing goof. Which could have benefited from being 20 minutes shorter.
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