Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant

This war drama is not at all what you might expect from a Guy Ritchie film – no black comedy or stylised camera work here – instead this surprisingly restrained action movie focuses on character and tension to convey its message about the shortcomings of US foreign policy.

Premise:  In March 2018, Master Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his US Army unit lose their local Afghan interpreter in a bomb attack during a routine vehicle inspection.  Kinley initially butts heads with his replacement interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim), but soon a bond develops between the two that will be put to the test under the most extreme of circumstances.

Review:

I really don’t want to say too much about the plot to Guy Ritchie's The Covenant, because I felt that the trailer actually gave far too much away, including a lot of plot elements from the second half of the movie.  That said, I do understand the need to explain that this is not a typical ‘gung-ho’ depiction of the US military’s 20-year War in Afghanistan, and the film’s title itself refers to events in the second half of the film.  (Incidentally, the movie’s original title was The Interpreter, but it was initially changed (perhaps to distinguish itself from the 2005 movie The Interpreter) to The Covenant, before being changed again to Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, possibly to avoid confusion with the 2006 movie The Covenant).

Generic title aside, the onscreen captions in this movie pretty much sum up the central theme of the film: during the 20-year War in Afghanistan, 50,000 Afghan interpreters worked alongside US forces against the Taliban, on the understanding that they and their families would be protected from reprisals and given US visas – but when the US military withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban recaptured the country, many interpreters were abandoned by the US government, resulting in over 300 being executed by the Taliban, with thousands more forced into hiding.

“…its underlying message packs a powerful emotional & political punch…”

The Covenant is not true story, and it’s probably even a stretch to call it ‘inspired by true events’ – instead, it’s a fictionalised tribute to the bond of brotherhood that grew between the US forces on the ground in Afghanistan and their local interpreters.  And while the movie is set several years before the official withdrawal of US forces in 2021, its underlying message – that the US government failed to live up to the promises it had made to those Afghans who risked their lives to protect the US forces – still packs a powerful emotional and political punch.

This is not at all what you might be expecting from a ‘Guy Ritchie movie’ – in fact, this is the least ‘Guy Ritchie movie’ that Guy Ritchie has made in quite some time.  Since returning to his gangster comedy roots with the excellent The Gentlemen in 2020 (just before the pandemic hit), it feels like Guy Ritchie has not only been extreme productive (releasing three movies in the space of two years), but he’s also been far more experimental – 2021's Wrath of Man was a much darker and grittier crime thriller than you might have been expecting, while 2023’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre was a silly, knockabout spy comedy that obviously didn’t take itself too seriously.  The Covenant is something else again – a ‘serious’ war action/drama that doesn’t have any of the humour you might normally associate with a Guy Ritchie film, or any of the showy, stylised camera work that he normally incorporates into his directorial work.

“…the action sequences focus on a sense of jeopardy & tension…”

The Covenant is – and I mean this as a compliment – a film that feels like the work of a ‘serious’ director, one who prioritises the film’s characters, sense of tension and underlying political themes more than imposing their own directorial identity on the movie.  That’s not to say that the film doesn’t have some great action sequences (it does), but the emphasis during the action sequences is on a sense of jeopardy and tension, depicting (within the confines of a Hollywood blockbuster) the reality of war where one stray bullet could mean the difference between life and death, and the US soldiers aren’t all indestructible one-man-armies.

In front of the camera, the film is carried by Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim as co-leads, who are both great in their roles.  Jake Gyllenhaal conveys the layers of the growing bond between Master Sergeant Kinley and Ahmed, but he’s also not afraid to hand the spotlight over to Dar Salim when the story calls for it – and Dar Salim absolutely holds his own in what should be a breakthrough performance for him.

“…a surprisingly tense & thoughtful war drama…”

If I’m feeling ungenerous, I could argue that the final act is a little predictable – but by the time you’ve followed the characters that far, through all they’ve had to go through to get there, you can excuse a little bit of predictability.  Ironically, and assuming that you haven’t already seen the trailer, the events of the middle section of the film do unfold in a very unexpected way, which again earns the right to play things a little more traditionally in the final act.

Shot on location in Spain (doubling for Afghanistan), the movie feels expansive and grounded – and again, a million miles away from the heightened reality of Guy Ritchie’s other recent films.  While this film may not appeal to you if you’re completely turned off by the war genre, this movie is certainly a surprisingly tense and thoughtful war drama that’s definitely worth giving the benefit of the doubt if you’re not normally a fan of Guy Ritchie’s work.