Josh Reviews Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant

In Guy Ritchie’s latest film, The Covenant, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Master Sergeant John Kinley, who leads a team of U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan in 2018, tasked with finding caches of bomb-making weapons.  It’s dangerous work, and in an early sequence we see a truck-bomb kill one of Kinley’s men, as well as their team’s Afghani interpreter.  The replacement interpreter is Ahmed (Dar Salim), who seems smart and competent but also someone who wants to do things his own way.  Ahmed and Kinley are forced to depend on one another for survival when a raid goes terribly wrong, and the film follows the two men through a variety of twists and turns that I won’t spoil here.

I quite enjoyed this film!  It’s not what I expected from Guy Ritchie.  While we get some great bantering dialogue among the men on Sergeant Kinley’s team in the film’s early going — a touchstone of Mr. Ritchie’s work — there’s none of the comedy that has often been a part of Mr. Ritchie’s films, and for the most part (other than some trippy sequences in which we briefly experience Kinley’s P.O.V. after he suffers a head wound), Mr. Ritchie leaves most of his stylistic tricks aside.  The result is a film that plays more like a straight drama/action film than I’d expected.  But, wow, I was impressed by what a tense, taut thriller Mr. Ritchie was able to craft here!  Mr. Ritchie is an extremely talented filmmaker, and it’s interesting to see him focus his efforts on crafting this type of nail-biter of a film.  I was literally on the edge of my seat during several tense moments in the film.

When I realized that this was a story set in Afghanistan post-9/11, I had some hesitation.  What kind of film would this be?  Would this be a jingoistic action-adventure?  For the most part, I was pleased by the approach taken by Mr. Ritchie and his team.  This is an action-adventure movie more than it is a drama, and the ending certainly has some wish-fulfillment elements to it.  But the film feels grounded in a genuine, heartbreaking anger at the reality of the way that the United States failed the many Afghani people who worked with the U.S. troops there, in exchange for the promise of protection and sanctuary, only to be abandoned when the U.S. withdrew and the Taliban immediately took over.  That’s a worthy center for a film.

I was pleased that the film was well-balanced between Jake Gyllenhaal’s John Kinley and Dar Salim’s Ahmed.  Mr. Gyllenhaal’s name is on the posters, and he was central in the film’s promotion, but the film itself is as focused on Ahmed as it is on Kinley, if not more so.  I was not familiar with Mr. Salim’s work prior to seeing this film, but wow was I bowled over by his magnetic performance.  Mr. Salim completely commands the screen whenever he appears.  He doesn’t have a tremendous amount of dialogue in the film; he conveys so much through his face and his body posture.  Ahmed was by far the most interesting character in the film to me, which is a credit to Mr. Salim’s beautiful, nuanced work.  Meanwhile, Jake Gyllenhaal wasn’t too shabby, either.  Mr. Gyllenhaal brings a toughness to the role that feels right for someone in Kinley’s position in the military, while also bringing his humanity into every scene in a way that makes us like and care about this soldier.  The film wisely doesn’t depict Kinley as some perfect saint; but it gives us enough reasons to like him and root for him.

The film makes several dramatic shifts as the story unfolds.  I enjoyed each plot twist, and I was pleased that I was never quite sure where the film was going.  There were several points in the film when I thought to myself, “oh, OK, I see where the story is heading”, but then just as I’d settled into that phase, the story would shift.  It all worked together well and the pieces came together in a satisfying way for me.

One note about the film’s title: I’ve referred to this film as The Covenant, even though the on-screen title is Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.  I can understand using Mr. Ritchie’s name in promoting the film, but actually having his name on the title card in the film felt a little gauche to me.  I also feel that calling the film Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant makes it seem like a less-serious production than I think Mr. Ritchie and his team intended.  The title Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant makes the film feel, to me, like it’s aiming to be something of a pulp adventure, perhaps intended as the start of a series of action films.  But the film itself is more serious than that; I think just going with The Covenant would have been a better approach.  (What is going on with the titles of Guy Ritchie’s films these days?  See also: the ridiculously titled Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.)

I’ve always appreciated Guy Ritchie’s talents as a writer and director.  I’ve loved many of his films (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Sherlock Holmes, The Gentlemen), even though every now and then he might swing and miss (for example: I thought the recent Wrath of Man was terrible).  The Covenant was an unexpected shift in tone for Mr. Ritchie.  I enjoyed the result.  (While I freely admit that there’s a part of me that wishes Mr. Ritchie would keep making films like Lock, Stock or Snatch or The Gentlemen forever…)

Please support my website by clicking through one of our Amazon links the next time you need to shop!  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.  That means I’ll receive a small percentage from any product you purchase from Amazon within 24 hours after clicking through.  Thank you!