Latino Review‘s Kellvin Chavez is reporting that Joaquin Phoenix has to pay the bills like anyone else, and has therefore agreed to play the lead in John Singleton‘s Without Remorse for Paramount Pictures. Pic will be an origin story thriller about how an Elite Navy Seal Commando named John Kelly becomes the C.I.A. operative known as Mr. Clark, the pivotal recurring character in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books who was played by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in The Sum of All Fears. No offense, but with Singleton directing there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Remorse will even approach the quality of Clear and Present Danger. Singleton is Singleton (and I was okay with Four Brothers — I went with it) and that’s fine, but he’s not in the class of the great Philip Noyce. I don’t mean to be blunt but the thing for Pheonix to do is hold his nose, do the job and move on like a man.