Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe, #1)

by Tom Clancy

WITHOUT REMORSE

Whenever Hollywood adapts a novel for film or television, there is always the debate about how faithful the adaptation should be to the specifics of the book, and to what extent the adaptation should take the character and spirit that makes the piece special and build something new that speaks to modern audiences. In the case of Without Remorse, the decision was made long before I was involved to update John Kelly’s journey for the era in which the film was being produced. However, as I’ve always loved the book and the character, I and other people involved with making the film did our best to preserve what readers love about Kelly and his journey. While I’m sure many readers would have loved a 70s-era version of the story, I also feel that updating the story for 2021 will help a broader audience connect with this iconic and beloved character. As for my process on this film, anytime I come onboard a project, I first look for ways to deeply understand the character and the themes of the story, because everything flows from that. Many of the film/tv projects I’ve worked on are based on books, but unlike my other book adaptations (e.g. Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff) this is the first time I’ve adapted a book where I was unable to speak with the author and “look under the hood of the car”. Therefore, I had to rely heavily on my own interpretation of Tom Clancy’s text to decide how to approach the material. To give readers a little insight into my process, I’ve noted a number of passages that helped guide me while I worked on the film. However, as I am only one of the writers who worked on this film, I am merely sharing the passages I found most informative as I was trying to help bring the character to life in a way fans would enjoy. I invite you to share your own interpretations of the passages and what makes this character so compelling to you.

It was hard not having a soul, most especially when you could remember having had one.

I’ve always loved the way this novel approaches the classic journey of metamorphosis and resurrection. On a fundamental level, it is a story about the death of one man and the birth of another. While this is a common motif in storytelling, the moments of death and rebirth frequently come back-to-back in a story (i.e. typically, late in the story, the worst possible thing happens to the hero and he/she is then reborn). In the case of Without Remorse, the man Kelly was dies in the beginning, and Kelly spends much of the story as a shadow of a man – a ghost haunting a former life without a sense – or seemingly even a desire – that he will ever be made whole again. I think it is Kelly’s acceptance of death that ironically allows not for Kelly’s resurrection, but ultimately for the birth of the new character of John Clark.

Christ, how did you ever get this screwed up? his mind demanded of him. He knew the answer, but even that was not a full explanation. Different segments of the organism called John Terrence Kelly knew different parts of the whole story, but somehow they’d never all come together, leaving the separate fragments of what had once been a tough, smart, decisive man to blunder about in confusion—and despair?

One of the things that I think elevates John Kelly above the traditional “man on a mission” is not only how screwed up he gets by the events of the story, but that he is aware that he is coming off the rails. And he then embraces his own darkness and chaos to advance his agenda. The fact that Kelly is unhinged and impulsive makes him a danger not only to himself and to society…but most importantly to his enemies. When I first saw a cut of the movie, I was thrilled to see that this livewire devil-may-care quality was something Michael B. Jordan really brought to life in his performance.

Loneliness didn’t tell you what you had lost, only that something was missing.

I found this to be a fascinating idea: that while our emotions are with us all the time, the memory of the specific thing that caused those powerful and pervasive feelings comes and goes. Similarly, it seems that sometimes when we are fighting, we lose sight of the thing we are actually fighting for, and this is one of the aspects of Kelly’s character I found intriguing. On the one hand, he seems to be a man who is struggling with loss, but on the other hand what he is truly struggling with is the anger caused by that loss. As I reread the novel recently, I was struck that at various turns in the book, I couldn’t put my finger on the specific event that was motivating him – was it seeking justice in an unjust world that took his pregnant wife, was it avenging a young woman he barely knew, or hurting the people who put him in the hospital? Ultimately, his motivation is more primal – it is a generalized rage and darkness that he channels at his enemies. I find this to be a really interesting reflection on how humans process emotion, and how our focus is often not on the injustice, but on exorcising the pain caused by the injustice.

What had she seen in the face of this man? It took her a moment to answer the question. Death was what she’d seen. Controlled. Planned. Disciplined.

The characters in the story who find Kelly most terrifying are the people who see him for who he truly is: a man who capable of visiting death on his enemies without remorse. By the time Kelly starts heading down his dark path of retribution, he is no longer bound by codes of law and religion. He is playing by his own set of rules. As Clancy states later in the book, “He was breaking the rules, important rules that he did fully understand, but doing so in pursuit of justice, or what he called justice in his own mind.” As I was researching the story and trying to understand the mindset of a man like Kelly, one of my SEAL contacts stated bluntly, “You can’t catch devils with angels”. I think Kelly shares this point of view, and he will gladly be the devil if that’s what the mission demands.

The past happened because a hundred little random things had to fall exactly into place in exactly the right way, in exactly the proper sequence, and while it was easy to accept the good results, one could only rage at the bad ones.

Throughout the novel, Tom Clancy shines a light on the arbitrary nature of the tragedies Kelly suffers. There is no satisfying answer to the question of “Why him?” The only answer is that life isn’t fair and there is no discernible divine plan. I find there to be something very powerful and unsettling about this, and I think Kelly feels this way too. To be punished by an ordered universe is one thing, but to be punished by a disordered one is another. Both in the movie and in the book, there is an arbitrary quality to the events that tear his life apart, and this meaninglessness only enhances Kelly’s sense of injustice. It seems to me that beneath the surface, part of Kelly’s struggle is a struggle against nihilism, and a struggle to hold onto a sense of purpose and meaning in a seemingly chaotic and meaningless world. This then begs the question – is Kelly someone who brings order to chaos, or someone who embraces chaos to serve his own ends?

Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem. The one hope of the doomed is not to hope for safety.

What a great quote to codify what makes John Kelly so electric on the page, and it echoes throughout every page of Tom Clancy’s novel. While Kelly is not a man with a death wish, he is a man who has accepted death, and a man with nothing to lose can be uniquely dangerous and effective. There is no fear with Kelly, only objectives and tactics, problems and solutions. Whenever I am working on a story, I am always looking to build scenes that could only exist with that one character. As for Kelly, he’s a character who when confronted with fire isn’t just someone who won’t back down, but he will run right through it to see the mission through. Though the specific journeys of the book and the film are different, in both versions Kelly is not someone who will weigh the risks to his own safety, only the risks to accomplishing his objectives.

Emotion was what had given him the mission. How he accomplished it had to come from something else. That would be a constant struggle, Kelly told himself, but one he would have to contend with successfully.

I’ve heard veteran friends say that you can either be a good soldier or you can process your emotions, but you can’t do both, and it often isn’t until after the fight is over that the journey of processing the emotions begins. In Kelly’s case, the grief and pain and anger are more than he can compartment, and the central drama of Kelly’s story is that he is a man who is waging a war, while he is also at war with himself. Unlike his past battles, where Kelly has always been able to maintain control and discipline, now he is struggling to keep his emotions at bay and focus on the mission as his rage threatens to be his undoing. I also found it interesting that while Kelly can be a master of disguises on the mission, the people who know him best and care about him can plainly see that he is coming unglued.

Discipline shows in how he operates—but his anger also shows in why he operates. Something made this man start to do this.”

One of the reasons I’ve always found this particular revenge story so compelling is that Kelly is not clinically detached from the mission. He is merely detached from the targets. When Kelly was in the Navy, he was a professional doing a job, and while this new mission requires him to put those same skills to work on American soil, his new mission is also profoundly personal. This represents an evolution in the way he operates, and his “work” is now infused with a new impulsiveness and recklessness that stems from his rage. This anger crackles throughout Kelly’s journey in both the book and the film.

If the dead still lived on the surface of this earth, then it was in the minds of those who remembered them,

If there is beauty and hope to be found in Kelly’s journey, I think it’s in his deep desire to keep alive the people he’s lost through his memories and his actions. As a writer trying to understand Kelly’s voice, I felt this really unlocked a critical aspect of his character. John’s mission is a deeply personal one, and though the world has plenty of problems, his goal isn’t to save the world (at least not yet!) – it’s just to do right by the people he’s lost. Throughout the book, Kelly is referred to as a speaker for the dead. He even says Pam’s name to the men he kills so they know that unlike her death, their death is not random – it is Kelly’s own brand of justice. I think this notion of Kelly speaking for the dead is something fans of the book will certainly find made its way into the movie adaptation.

No, there was no remorse for this man, none for the others.

I’ve written a number of stories about the military, and I am always fascinated by the moral codes of those who fight for a living. There is a certain breed of soldier, and I think Kelly is one of them, who believe that the targets they go after are marked for death by their own actions. As one put it, the enemy “made a choice that is inconsistent with life, and we are just there to give them the bad news.” Or as another friend in special operations put it more succinctly, “some people just need to get got.” Viewed through this lens, a man like Kelly is not a killer, but merely death’s messenger. I am not saying this worldview is right or wrong, but it is one that is sincerely held. To me, this helped explain Kelly’s near clinical detachment from the suffering of his enemies and greatly informed how I approached Kelly’s character during my time writing on the film.

EPILOGUE

As a writer, I am fascinated by characters who reach their breaking point – not just a point of crisis, but a true fracture that shatters them to their core, and one they may never recover from. That’s what has always drawn me to the character of John Kelly, well before I worked on the film. If you are interested in reading another book that is grounded in hard research and explores characters reaching their breaking point in a world that seems to be broken, then I invite you to check out my debut novel, Animals, which I actually edited during the production of Without Remorse.