REBORN SUPREMACY
IN TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE, WE SEE HOW JOHN KELLY BECOMES JOHN CLARK, A CIA OPERATIVE OFTEN DESCRIBED AS JACK RYAN’S DARK SIDE. TOTAL FILM DODGES SHRAPNEL ON SET TO TALK TO PRODUCER-STAR MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND DIRECTOR STEFANO SOLLIMA…
Located in PotsdamBabelsberg outside Berlin, Studio Babelsberg has been operational since 1912, making it the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. In the 1920s, it homed Fritz Lang’s towering sciencefiction masterpiece Metropolis, while it’s recently played host to Bridge Of Spies, Captain America: Civil War and Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life.
It is, however, debatable whether its studio area of 270,000 square feet has ever seen more carnage than it’s now witnessing on this overcast day in November 2019. Producer-star Michael B. Jordan and director Stefano Sollima are a month into shooting Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, and a ginormous gunfight has just taken place at the intersection of four Russian streets. Torn-up police cars stand at zig-zagging angles, and many of the surrounding buildings are, to use the technical term, shot to shit. Total Film wanders into one of the buildings that look down on the crossroads, and climbs the staircase to a room that’s littered with bullet holes. Jordan’s character, John Kelly, earlier exchanged fire from this room, and then fought with Russian soldiers on the staircase before spilling outside into the awaiting mayhem. It was all captured in one shot.
“We are in Russia and it’s the climax of the action,” says Sollima, who directed 10 episodes of the excellent Italian TV series Gomorrah before making his English-language debut with Sicario 2: Soldado, the atmospheric, bleak, sorely underrated sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 crime-drama. “Of course, as it is in the rest of the movie, the sequence is fully played by actors, with very hard and complex stunt action. Michael actually jumped behind a wall during a real, huge explosion. We shoot many of the sequences with longer takes – the rhythm is created by the choreography itself, not by the editing. That way, you have a constant flow of tension that never stops.”
Jordan wanders over and takes a seat. He looks remarkably calm, all things considered. “Y’know, Creed was boxing – very specific,” he starts,
stressing that his training for Without Remorse went above and beyond. “Black Panther was action, but it was a different type of action. This was… I don’t know, man, it’s so specific. There’s going to be a whole community of military that are going to be watching this thing for all the little details, and I want to make sure we get them all right. It was Navy Seal training. I worked with Buck Doyle, who’s a Marine Special Forces guy. I spent a lot of time with him on his ranch, gun training and tactical training. And I worked with James Dever, who’s an ex-Marine as well: weapons training, explosives, diving, skydiving, plane crashes…”
TF wanders over to take a look at the plane that was built for the crash into water, a remarkable construction that can pivot, rattle out your fillings and fill with water. On the way, there’s time to trade a few words with some beefy blokes who helped shoot up the square.
“We play highly trained operatives, specialists in modern warfare, who help John Kelly,” says one.
“We had to be muscled up already, and then we had two weeks of weapons training and clearing rooms,” says another.
The third nods. “We’d take a bullet for John,” he adds, and it sounds like these guys feel the same about their producer and star. “Michael B. sets the pace. We follow suit. He’ll finish at 4am after a 14-hour day, then he’ll train to six and hit the sauna before bed.”
KELLY HERO
Published in August 1993, Without Remorse is the origin story of John Clark, one of the recurring characters in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan universe. The novel is set during the Vietnam War, and sees former Navy Seal frogman John Kelly uncover an international drug ring stretching from Russia to Baltimore, via Asia. During the course of the book, he gets involved with the CIA and its covert tactics.
We have, of course, had various Jack Ryan films starring Alec Baldwin (The Hunt For Red October), Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, Clear And Present Danger), Ben Affleck (The Sum Of All Fears) and Chris Pine (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), plus two seasons of Amazon Prime Video’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, starring John Krasinski. But while Clark has popped up in Clear And Present Danger, The Sum Of All Fears and the Jack Ryan TV series – played, respectively, by Willem Dafoe, Liev Schreiber and John Hoogenakker – he will make his first solo outing in Without Remorse.
The film’s been a long time coming, with an adaptation mooted as soon as the book debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. Savoy Pictures then bought the rights for a cool $2.5m, and Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Gary Sinise were linked to the project at various junctures. In 2012, Christopher McQuarrie signed to direct for
Paramount Pictures, with Tom Hardy approached for the lead.
This iteration, by Amazon Studios and Paramount Pictures, gained traction in September 2018, when Jordan signed on to play John Kelly in a two-part film series that will consist of Without Remorse and an adaptation of its sequel book Rainbow Six, published in 1998. Sollima was hired to direct in December 2018, and brought on ace screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Hell Or High Water) to rewrite the script having worked with him on Soldado. The principal cast was rounded out by Jamie Bell, Guy Pearce and Queen & Slim star Jodie Turner-Smith.
“I’m a huge fan of Tom Clancy because he’s one of the most interesting writers of political thrillers,” says Sollima, whose kids were hooked on the Rainbow Six videogames when he was approached by Jordan. “He can create scenarios of extremely realistic, political plots, described with technical and operational accuracy. I like very much when a movie or a story is so grounded
‘TOM CLANCY IS ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING WRITERS OF POLITICAL THRILLERS’ STEFANO SOLLIMA
in reality. But the script was written, I think, a decade ago, and was naturally a bit dated. I worked with Taylor to get back to the book. We tried to preserve the soul of the story. It’s still a revenge movie set in a geopolitically accurate context, but we didn’t want to make a period movie in Vietnam. We chose Syria because it’s not dissimilar. In Syria, you have a war that is fought by Syrians, but split into two factions. And one is fighting with the US, and the other one is Russia.”
“We took the bones of the world that Tom Clancy built, and wanted to do our version of it,” explains Jordan, flashing nuclear charisma as he grins. “Obviously, John Kelly’s looking a little different! And he’s a lot younger than he is in the novels. We wanted to make it modern and relatable to audiences today. And our version is really based on family, y’know? [The trailer shows – SPOILER ALERT! – Kelly embarking on a roaring rampage of revenge mission when his pregnant wife is killed at the beginning of the film] It raises the stakes. It really takes something away from him, and shows the making of that man you see in Rainbow Six and the rest of the novels with John Clark.”
POSITIVE ACTION
For Jordan, who has his pick of projects, Without Remorse offered a chance to grow. Previously, he’s only had to concentrate on his acting; this time he’s been involved in each draft of the script, the casting process, wardrobe… everything, really. “I want to have a bigger voice, and I’m starting to have one now, and it’s fun,” he says, before pointing out that the main selling point is his belief in the franchise. “I loved these type of movies growing up, y’know? And to be able to build the action sequences… to go from a plane crash to diving underwater to jumping to the side of a burning car to jumping through glass to gunfights and hand-tohand combat…. For me, it was my ideal movie, and I wanted to pull from a lot of movies that I loved growing up, like Bourne and Mission: Impossible.”
Sollima, born in 1966, reaches back further, comparing Without Remorse to the American thrillers he grew up watching, like Three Days Of The Condor. But he does agree that the brutally impactful action is closer to Mission: Impossible – Fallout than any ’70s thriller he might mention.
“Everything has to be realistic,” he
says. “I need the help of the actors, because I have to ask them to perform it 100 per cent. The action is not action for itself, but it’s action related to character. It’s more interesting, and more important, to feel what the character feels, than to show an incredible sequence. I’m not really interested in the gun shots and explosions. I’m interested in how this affects my characters. I want to read the reaction of the actor during a gunfight. If you have a real gunfight with a lot of stuff exploding around you, you’re going to be really deep into what’s happening. It helps them deliver the performance.”
“I had that tragedy to pull from,” says Jordan of the demise of his on-screen family. “Character-wise, in every situation, I know what’s motivating Kelly, and what he’s trying to get from a scene, what’s his goal. Me and Stefano are constantly going back and forth between scenes, just making sure we stay on track with where we’re coming from, and where we’re going. ‘What’s he thinking about right now?’ It’s been a nice balance.” The grin flashes. “There’s a lot of action.”
Presuming Without Remorse does well, Rainbow Six will be next, with Clark fronting a counter-terrorism unit. We know that Jordan is on board, and Sollima is game too, saying, “I will do whatever Michael asks me to do.” But might we see Clark and Ryan join forces at some future point?
Jordan laughs. “Our film is a standalone that can live in its own franchise, but we still leave doors open for things to flow. We don’t want to back ourselves into any corners, if things were to work out with other… things.”
Whatever happens, you can bet it will be explosive.
TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE WILL DEBUT ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ON 30 APRIL.
‘FOR ME, IT WAS MY IDEAL MOVIE, AND I WANTED TO PULL FROM A LOT OF MOVIES I LOVED GROWING UP’ MICHAEL B. JORDAN