Without Remorse Movie Review – Movie Recap
The film opens in Aleppo, where Navy SEAL
John Kelly is with his team infiltrating what
is allegedly a Syrian safe house to recover
a CIA operative taken hostage.
As the team heads in and takes out other gunmen,
Kelly finds out that the men are ex-Russian
military and that the place is a Russian arms
depot, which was not disclosed to them.
The hostage is recovered, but more gunmen
attack, and one of Kelly’s men is killed
in the shootout before the Russian assassins
are taken out.
The team flies out just as the place gets
bombed, and Kelly almost fights his superior
Deputy Director Robert Ritter for not giving
them full information on the captors.
Three months later, Kelly is having a party
with his pregnant wife Pam and other friends.
Meanwhile, one member of Kelly’s team, Rowdy
King, is taking the garbage outside his house
when a van runs him over and leaves him dead.
Another man, Keith Webb, is talking to his
wife on the way home from work, when the same
van is in front of him.
A man gets out and shoots Webb dead so his
wife can hear.
Pam goes to bed while Kelly listens to music
in the basement.
The men from the van sneak around his
and cut the power.
Kelly soon notices something suspicious and
grabs a gun before investigating.
The gunmen reach his bedroom and shoot Pam
to death in bed, also killing her unborn child.
One of the gunmen shoots one of his men dead
and leaves him in the bedroom.
Kelly kills the other two men before fighting
and wounding the last man.
He gets a brief look at the man’s face before
he escapes.
Kelly, who was just shot, weakly crawls to
the bedroom to find his wife dead.
Ritter debriefs the rest of the team on the
attacks, but his wording of the situation
hits a nerve with the team’s Lieutenant
Commander Karen Greer due to Ritter suggesting
the men targeted were involved with something
dirty.
Greer visits Kelly as he recovers, and he
tells her that he didn’t kill the third
man in the bedroom.
He asks for a name for anyone who may have
had involvement in sending those men.
While Kelly goes through recovery, Greer and
Ritter meet with Secretary of Defense Thomas
Clay and CIA Director Sarah Dillard.
It is disclosed that one of the victims in
the previous mission was the son of the head
of the Federal Security Service.
Knowing that the murders are foreign attacks
on American soil, Clay wants to sweep this
under the rug for fear that talks of conflicts
between Russia and the U.S. may lead to another
cold war.
Greer gives Kelly the name of the man who
gave passports to the gunmen, Andre Vaseliev.
Kelly tracks Vaseliev down and tails his security
team.
He manages to get cops to stop one of the
vans before cornering Vaseliev’s car at
the airport.
He pins the car down and kills the driver
before setting the car on fire and getting
inside.
He orders Vaseliev to give up a name, but
he tells Kelly that death follows him wherever
he goes.
Kelly shoots him once until Vaseliev gives
up the name Viktor Rykov.
Kelly shoots Vaseliev in the head before officers
show up to arrest him.
In prison, Kelly talks to Greer and gives
her Rykov’s name.
Later, a guard orders Kelly to go with him,
but he refuses since he isn’t told where.
Armed guards show up, but Kelly prepares by
plugging a sink to wet the floor.
He fights the guards until U.S. Marshal Kevin
Townsend comes in with a phone for Kelly.
Greer is on the other end, telling him to
go with Townsend because he can trust him.
Kelly is escorted to meet with Greer, Ritter,
Clay, and Dillard, where he identifies Rykov
in a photo lineup.
Clay agrees to allow Kelly to join a team
to extract Rykov from Russia, but he must
return to jail after.
Kelly and Greer fly with a black ops team
to make a HALO insertion.
Kelly tells Greer that he feels that if he
went home earlier instead of doing another
tour, he would still have Pam and their baby.
Russian fighter pilots then fly near the plane
and fire a missile at them, hitting the wing
and sending the plane crashing into the Barents
Sea.
Most of the team makes it out alive.
The team takes a boat to Murmansk to meet
with Ritter.
Kelly confronts him over intelligence leaks
that may have been the reason why the Russians
knew where to detect them.
In a heated argument, Ritter says he is just
trying to get to Rykov, but he was not responsible
for the leaks.
The team then heads on with the mission.
They track Rykov to an apartment building,
but Kelly goes off on his own against orders
to finish Rykov himself.
He finds Rykov strapped with a suicide vest,
telling Kelly that both of them are pawns
working for the same king, revealing himself
as a deep-cover agent with the CIA.
He blows himself up, which causes part of
the building to come down.
A sniper then begins firing upon the team,
killing one member, Dallas.
Police also arrived on the scene.
As the team hides, they come to the realization
that they were set up to get caught as part
of an attack to initiate a U.S.-Russian war.
Kelly offers himself as a distraction to give
the team a chance to run.
He diverts the police away from the building
and then takes out the sniper before getting
an officer and stealing his uniform to escape.
He steals an ambulance and rejoins the team
as they get away by boat.
Kelly returns to D.C. and finds Clay in a
bathroom.
He incapacitates him and drives away with
him.
Kelly threatens Clay’s family until he reveals
that the mission was a setup to start a war
in the hopes that a new cold war may boost
the U.S. economy to unite the country against
a common enemy.
Kelly then drives the car off the bridge,
and Clay, who is handcuffed, drowns.
Kelly prepares to drown as well, even seeing
a vision of Pam talking to him near a campfire.
He says he misses her, but she assures him
she is always with him.
Kelly is given a funeral, but it is revealed
that Greer used scuba gear to rescue him.
She brings him to a train station so that
he can start a new life.
He is even given a new identity: John Clark.
Midway through the credits, Clark meets with
Ritter a year later.
He tells him that, to prevent future conflicts,
he would like to put together a team, codename
“Rainbow.”
Ritter tells Clark it’s good to have him
back, to which he says that it’s good to
be back.
