Throughout much of Without Remorse, viewers think they’re watching a simple revenge movie. At the top of the film, John led his team of Navy SEALs on a mission to Syria on the pretext that they were rooting out Syrian sanctioned murderers and thugs. Who they really left dead, however, were Russian spies. Afterward, every member of Kelly’s team was murdered seemingly by Russian agents, as was John’s wife and unborn daughter, who were executed while Pam slept.
Following the assault on his wife, Kelly went into Jack Bauer mode and killed every Russian official and underling who could bring him closer to Viktor Rykov (Brett Gelman), the alleged Russian operative who led the attack on John’s home at the beginning of the movie. And to be sure, Rykov was certainly there, as both John and the audience saw him with his mask off when John was shot during the home invasion.
However, the big twist of Without Remorse is that Rykov was not a Russian asset; he was an American one. When John, Naval officer Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith), and CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell) track Rykov to a Russian apartment, they discover the whole movie has been an elaborate ruse, played at the expense of American intelligence and (soon) the public. John and his family were just collateral damage.
“There are no other ops, John,” Rykov says when the American special forces team corners him in an apartment, revealing he’s been lying in wait with a suicide vest. “You and me being here is the real op.”
As Rykov explains before pushing the button, he fancies himself a true patriot, even more so than “those behind us in Washington.” He’s been convinced that the best way he can serve his country is by dying in a fiery explosion in Russia. His goal isn’t to take John Kelly or his team with him either. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Rykov is working for “those behind us,” and those D.C. insiders needed John, or an American soldier like him, to be in the building when the explosion went off. That way it’d look pretty damning to Russian authorities, especially since snipers working with Rykov murdered the first Russian cops to arrive at the scene.
This plan was executed on the assumption that an international incident would be created when it reached the press that American soldiers were killed on Russian soil while performing an illegal operation—which itself would be seen by the American public as retaliation for the illegal operation on American soil that killed John’s wife.