perseus71

Based on an antique manga, this drivel from Amazon is a big waste of time.

Given the budget they had a great opportunity to produce something on the scale of "Hunt for Red October" meets "Tora Tora Tora". Instead what we have is daytime soap with enough dull dialogue to put an elephant to sleep. Besides protagonist and the antagonist are shown as superhuman all knowing people who get all the right coincidences as they need.

The action scene, if you call them that; are a snooze fest and demonstrate a clear lack of military knowledge and tactical understanding on part of the director.

Overall I'd give zero rating if I could.

There are two major criteria on which this movie will have to be graded and sadly it fails on both.

1. HOLLYWOOD MILITARY FARE - Even by Hollywood standards, this movie performs pretty badly. Compared to the likes of Lone Survivor, Act of Valor or 13 Hours, this stands out like a sad travesty. I don't even want to compare with Zero Dark Thirty as this one would a moth compared to that one. A few points to illustrate its failure on this front. Military tactics, discipline, the comm traffic are even worse than The Expendables. The uniforms are wrong, the military chain of command is ignored. (Does a Lieutenant Commander take order from a CIA Liaison which contradict her own Pentagon Boss?). Another pet peeve, why does a silenced M4A1 sound like an AK47? Where's the fire discipline? When other movies on a lesser budget can deliver on these counts, why couldn't this big budget one? How can one lowly CIA field officer suddenly twirl entire Seal Team around his pinky when the Secretary of Defense does not agree?

2. THE TOM CLANCY ANGLE - Where do I begin? In the book Without Remorse, It's a sole Seal Operator John Kelly who lost his wife to a car accident (Not Russian mercenaries). He picks up a drug mule hitchhiker named Pam whose Pimp objects to her going legit. Kelly is wounded due to a shotgun blast while Pam is tortured and killed. Upon recovery Kelly goes vigilante and kills everyone in the gang. It is ONLY at the very end that CIA agent Bob Ritter comes in and provides a new identity (Clark) to Kelly in exchange for him rescuing a Colonel from enemy interrogation.

Needless to say, except for the 2 names John Kelly/ John Clark and Bob Ritter, rest of the plot of this movie has absolutely nothing to do with the book. Even if we look at the plot on it's own merit without Clancy's name, it still struggles to stand on its own. Without revealing too many spoilers, I will say that there's more holes to this plot than a Cheese Grater.

I have no idea why this movie has got so much high rating. Makes me suspect all these high rating reviews.

Director Vishal Furia is also the story writer for this movie. This story had so much more potential than the weak direction afforded for it.

From the very beginning, there are very obvious mistakes that are jarring and disrupt viewer immersion into the story. As the movie progresses, the disjointed and out of sequence events make one feel as if this was a case of poor editing as well.

At the end of the movie one is left with more questions than answers. Some of them very core to the story/plotline.