Without Remorse, featuring Michael B Jordan (John Kelly), is based on Tom Clancy’s novel which goes by the same name. The American action-thriller is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
John Kelly is the Senior Chief at the US SEAL Navy. The story begins in Syria where they are on a mission. CIA operative Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) gives them a task to save a hostage captured and fools them into attacking a Russian arms depot.
A month later, Kelly returns to the States along with his team and is celebrating his wife’s pregnancy. They are having a daughter together. At the same time, some men linked to the Russian FSB pin down 3 of his teammates one by one.
They enter Kelly’s house and kill his pregnant wife in cold blood. One of the team members is also killed by the team by another one in the room. Rest are killed by Kelly yet one manages to escape.
Kelly himself is seriously harmed. His friend Lieutenant Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith) is on his side. She gives him the intel on the attackers and leads him to Andre Vaseliev (Merab Ninidze), who issued their passports to the US. In his own way, Kelly extracts the name from Vaseliev, the fourth guy is Victor Rykov (Brett Gelman).
In an attempt to catch hold of Victor Rykov, the CIA plans a mission to Russia which is headed by Greer and Kelly is on the team. He wants to avenge the death of his wife and daughter.
But as they reach Russia, they are greeted by a completely different narrative and are caught in a situation of life and death.
Without Remorse ending explained in detail:
Whose side is Rykov on?
Kelly and his team have faced hell to catch hold of Rykov. After a near-death experience post the plane crash, they are finally able to trace him down.
Kelly locks the others out and goes ahead to deal with him alone. But when he encounters Rykov, the situation doesn’t turn out as expected. He was waiting for Kelly and has turned himself into a human bomb.
Rykov tells him that he works for the CIA and he has been kept in the dark because they wanted him to die on Russian soil. He then goes ahead and says that they are both pawns working for the same king.
It is a trap, the team has been set up. Rykov blows himself off, but luckily the team survives. They are trying to escape when the snipers block all their possible exits.
They want a War: USA v/s Russia
Kelly and his team are trying to safeguard themselves from the snipers, one of them gets badly injured. Meanwhile, they connect the dots on all that has happened.
Everything was planned and not a coincidence. One of the Russian soldiers was already dead when Kelly reached his room. Since a few Russian soldiers died on American soil, the next step was to kill US military on Russian soil. This could possibly blow off a war between the two countries.
Kelly was involved in this op because he had previously attacked a Russian site and could be an easy target. The snipers killed Russian policemen so that the blame can go on Kelly and his team.
Somehow, Kelly manages to help his team escape alive and deals with the Russian force alone. He also manages to escape dressed in a Russian military uniform.
Ritter helps them all get on a boat and escape, turns out he wasn’t a bad guy. He gives Kelly money and asks him to go MIA in order to find the real culprit.
They trace all the drama to Secretary Clay (Guy Pearce), he was aware of certain developments which were purposely not mentioned in the report. Kelly takes him in a car which he drowns in the river and asks him to reveal the reason behind all this.
Clay mentions that it was the economists who made US win the Second World War, people’s fear of the enemy helped increase the unity amongst the Americans.
Since the war was over and no enemy was left to fear; Americans started fighting internally, they had forgotten the worth of Independence. Hence, Clay set this all up as Russia was their biggest enemy, fearing it would reunite Americans. Kelly kills him and disappears.
John Kelly is back
A year later, Kelly returns to Washington DC. Ritter is promoted to the post of CIA’s director.
Kelly has returned with a plan in mind and wants to present it to the President of the United States. He is afraid that history can repeat itself.
He wants to lead a Multinational Counterterrorist Team, made of US, UK and hand-selected NATO personnel with the full support of their national intelligence agencies. The team would be called ‘The Rainbow’. He shares this idea with Ritter.
John Kelly is back, stronger and more powerful.
Also Read: Netflix working on anime adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell