After a postponed release, Michael B. Jordan’s Without Remorse, a take on Tom Clancy’s novel of the same name will arrive for streaming on Amazon Prime Video on April 30th.
Jordan, who co-produced the film with Akiva Goldsman, stars as leading man ex-US Navy Seal John Clark, who is out for revenge after the loss of his family. Jordan along with co-stars Jodie-Turner Smith, Lauren London, and Brett Gelman along with director Stefano Sollima chatted with the press via conference earlier this month.
Stefano Sollima, having built up experience as a war zone photographer, spoke to bringing that experience to directing the film which explores the aftermath of the effects of war on soldiers saying, “When you work in a war zone area you have the responsibility to report the reality in a truthful and respectful way, and most of all I think that you can not dirty the reality with your own point of view. So it’s like you don’t want to judge what you are experiencing because it’s up to the audience that is gonna judge on their own and then I feel this instead is in the spirit of objective reporting. And I feel that like in the movie it translates more or less in the same way. I need to inform, to study a lot to know everything about the war at the time portrayed, and when I work on a character I don’t want to never judge him so I try to leave displeasure to the audience. So it’s a way to be close to the story and to your character but at the same time be respectful [and] a step ahead.”
Earlier in the year, it was announced that Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society production company expanded its deal with Amazon Studios after Amazon acquired Without Remorse. Speaking on Outlier Society’s venture into producing action thrillers Jordan said, ” I think, you know, just being involved from the absolute beginning to the end. I think it was very hands-on in a way of how to build out stunts, you know what the process would be, and having experienced producers like Akiva and Liz Raposo, people who really have been through the process before that worked on high, high stakes action movies, and really following their lead on how to like package together okay we’re going to do this intense airplane crash that’s going to get us, working with the visual effects supervisor to work out that sequence and how exactly we’re going to practically shoot it, or when to use the crane on the shot and the water tanks and this and that. So it was like it was just going through the process of building that out. It was a learning curve for myself so I walk away from this movie with more knowledge and experience and how to put those sequences in those movies together, so yeah I know when to shut up and listen and learn. So I was a sponge on this, and I think we walked away with something that we could be really happy with.”
Jodie Turner-Smith, who was last seen on the big screen in 2019’s Queen & Slim, spoke on the intensity of the training she experienced playing Clark’s right-hand woman former SEAL team member Lt. Commander Karen Greer while pregnant saying, “I’m used to feeling like, Okay, I’m a strong person I’m an athletic person and I can push my body to the limit. And to sort of jump into this and you know I kind of have a little bit of a background in this genre being that I started on a television show on TNT called The Last Ship that was kind of my first big role on television and that was all about just running around, getting the bad guys jumping in and out of stuff getting exploded so I thought this was something that I was definitely ready to throw my body into but to sort of add that really unique, and I mean, nobody really tells you what all that your body is going through and it’s so funny because it’s like I’ve trained for many things in my life. But what was required of me physically with carrying the baby and doing this film was unlike anything that I have ever experienced, you know. So, in terms of what was it like I mean it was intense, you know, obviously I worked with a trainer as well, Michael was so gracious to let me borrow his trainer.” “Also obviously you know as part of the production we worked with these guys, making sure that we had integrity with the way that we were moving in combat, the way we would use our weapons, the way that we would command each other in groups. These are men that are working together all the time, to the point where they become a unit they become like one and we’re needing to emulate this idea that we have been there years living this life and working together so you know it was all of that and just throwing myself into, into all of it and you know one thing about Stefano really want to make it look as cool and interesting as possible by having us do as much as we can and so you know, I definitely was like, I saw what I was capable of, because it was just like, I was working twice as hard, I mean, there’s so many things you don’t know, I didn’t even know I wasn’t gonna be able to breathe like everybody else.” Turner-Smith added.
Smith wasn’t however the only lady in Clark’s life in the film, in which Lauren London returned to acting in the film as Clark’s pregnant wife Pam. Speaking on channeling her personal life experiences into the role London stated, “I think that you bring your life experiences to your art, and I always love artists that work like that and so I try my best to be honest in that way and I think just being a mother and a partner and experiencing love to the degree that I was able to experience it I brought that tenderness and vulnerability to the character, and Michael being a really good friend of mine before we ever worked together made it really comfortable and respectful and he held a space for me to be able to be so vulnerable in this character at the time of my life that I was in,” London added. Michael responded by showing appreciation for Lauren and her work stating, “Everything Lauren just said, you know, it was something that us as actors and artists being able to, to have opportunity to express ourselves through our work is sometimes the only release that we can really get in that type of way, and we were so lucky as a project and as a scene partner for Lauren to be so generous, you know, it has helped me personally get through and understand the mind state and some of those emotional beats of what a person will be going through in certain situations so I think it is added so many layers to the performance across the board, and also was my driving force throughout the movie as well so it’s something that sometimes in movies, you just get those, you know those x-factors that special, whatever it is that just, makes things just pop the way it is and Lauren for us was definitely one of those things.”
