Movie Without Remorse (2021)
- Thread starter BusSport
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Ok, on the one hand I’m glad someone is finally taking John Clark’s origin story forward. On the other hand....about the only link to the novel is his name and that his wife was killed (sort of)
Problems for me....John Clark was white, and would be about 70-75 now. The novel is set around 1969-70ish. His pregnant wife does die in a car accident. After that he picks up a girl hitching. Ends up taking on with her. Finds that she was a prostitute in Baltimore and has been through some whacked shit. Gets her clean and clear of it all. With her new clarity she decides she needs to help take these bad guys down. He screws up on an inner city recon with her and gets her killed.
He goes off the deep end and sets about taking all the bad guys down in a style that is part Bronson, part Bourne. Bad guys are pulling in heroin from Vietnam in dead soldiers and making a killing. He takes it all down, and is about to get caught when a CIA handler he worked some jobs with grabs him ahead of the police. John Kelly becomes John Clark. And John Clark is a bad ass.
I want to see THAT movie.
Problems for me....John Clark was white, and would be about 70-75 now. The novel is set around 1969-70ish. His pregnant wife does die in a car accident. After that he picks up a girl hitching. Ends up taking on with her. Finds that she was a prostitute in Baltimore and has been through some whacked shit. Gets her clean and clear of it all. With her new clarity she decides she needs to help take these bad guys down. He screws up on an inner city recon with her and gets her killed.
He goes off the deep end and sets about taking all the bad guys down in a style that is part Bronson, part Bourne. Bad guys are pulling in heroin from Vietnam in dead soldiers and making a killing. He takes it all down, and is about to get caught when a CIA handler he worked some jobs with grabs him ahead of the police. John Kelly becomes John Clark. And John Clark is a bad ass.
I want to see THAT movie.
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I'm pretty sure the setting is going to be moved to the present-day as was done with the John Krasinski Jack Ryan TV series. In fact, given that they're both being done by Amazon, I suspect they're both going to be set in the same continuity to allow for a future crossover and to start building a shared universe if the film is successful.
That’s a good point. I should check these out. Still haven’t seen the new reboots like Jack Ryan. Just need to get out of stubborn old ways.
I just always wanted to see that novel properly done. That time has passed though.
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So we’re NOT going to see him torture a drug dealer in a decompression chamber? That sucks.
They could have stayed true to the book without telling the “Billy on the barometric chamber” scene.
They took too long getting this on the screen in any form. Now a days it has to be a diversity hire. They still could have set it in 1970 though. Being......diverse.....he could have easily stayed undercover on the streets of Baltimore.
This just feels like Affleck and that abomination of Sum of All Fears. Another good book that wasn’t told right. Or maybe I just have issue with anyone but Ford playing Ryan.
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Young Alec Baldwin did a good job. But outgrew the part.
Fun fact, Clancy hated Ford’s performance as Jack Ryan.
The problem with the Sum of All Fears was, if you’re world building, you don’t fuck up the timeline like that. Also, changing the villains from. ME terrorists to white supremacists was hacky.
I liked Baldwin in HFRO a lot. It was slightly jarring when Ford took over, but it went away quickly as I felt that Ford was actually better at playing Ryan (regardless of what the cantankerous old author thought).
Having Ford reprise Ryan in 2002.....I’m torn. That’s only five years past Air Force One (totally works) but six years before that atrocious Indy movie where he looked way too old. Apparently he dropped out of this due fo script conflicts with the Director, who later dropped out of the project too.
The new Director went with neo nazi’s as he didn’t think Islamists could pull such a thing off. Funny, I would have thought it less likely that neo Nazis could pull this thing off.
After viewing this I’m even less inclined to want to check this out....and I wasn’t feeling super inclined anyway. Even in just a trailer you can see they took a VERY vague outline of John Clark’s origin story for this. Extremely vague.
I get the urge to modernize a character, and I like Michael B Jordan. But, people go nuts for historical pieces as it is, and a setting of Baltimore in 1970, drugs and inner city violence and Nam....who wouldn’t want to check that out?
Optimally, the original story would have been best told by having Willem Dafoe play Kelly in between Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger coming out in the theaters. But, since that never happened I guess there is no harm in modernizing the character and telling a roughly similar story.
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I make it a habit to avoid watching a movie of a book I have read.
They almost always disappoint.
I will read a book after watching the movie, however.
They almost always disappoint.
I will read a book after watching the movie, however.
Good point. Even if they had done the proper movie of this book right it would have disappointed. There is never substitute for how one can imagine it in their mind.
Though, I have to admit I didn’t read this book until the early 90s. So, I could not imagine John Kelly as anything other than a young Dafoe.