Director’s best movie in years grounded in real-world stakes
For the past few years, Guy Ritchie and his filmmaking collaborators have alternated between lightweight larks and hefty tales of masculinity. There was the
2019 ensemble crime comedy “The Gentleman,” followed by the heavy-duty “Heat” riff “Wrath of Man,” which was chased by the globe-trotting spycraft romp “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.” Swinging back to a more serious register, Ritchie presents his first film grounded in harsh real-world politics, “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” and it’s the best film he has made in years.
The film is inspired by the many true, tragic stories of Afghan interpreters who worked with the United States military for more than 20 years, who were promised visas and then left to fend for themselves in a hostile country after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Ritchie and co-writers Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies have crafted a story about the U.S. military that fits into his auteurist point of view, about the deals made among men.
Ritchie plays with text-based information dumps in the film, scattering locations, names and definitions of military jargon throughout. But at the very end, there’s a definition that illuminates the title and underlines the film’s thesis: the word “covenant,” defined as a bond, a pledge, a commitment.
On one side of this covenant is Sgt. John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal), a tough weapons and explosives hunter who leads a tight crew of soldiers. On the other is John’s new interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim), a man of few words possessed of a razor sharp ability to read people.
The team uncovers a huge factory for improvised explosive devices in a remote location, and comes under fire from the Taliban, who arrive in endless waves. What unfolds is an unbelievable tale of survival, sacrifice
and redemption. When Ahmed and John find themselves alone in the wilderness, John mortally wounded, sought by the Taliban, Ahmed drags him to the base at risk to his own safety. It’s a lifesaving act of love, generosity
and sacrifice that delivers John back home, and leaves Ahmed on the run with his wife and baby, hunted by the Taliban for killing their soldiers and collaborating
with an American.
John is wracked with guilt, haunted by memory, frustrated at the bureaucracy that fails to deliver the visas they promised, and he takes matters into his own hands, going outside the system at his own expense, knowing that the only way to repay his debt is with the same kind of personal risk and potential sacrifice.
Ritchie bites off meatier material with “The Covenant,” and it’s a pleasure to see him work with two great actors. Salim brings a serious soulfulness to Ahmed and the care he administers; Gyllenhaal applies his wildeyed intensity to John’s mission, utilizing every advantage he has to leverage the weight of the military machine in Ahmed’s favor.
At times the acting, filmmaking and tone are too thrilling, considering the grave topic. Tackling such a political subject is new for Ritchie, though examined through the perspective of his oeuvre, it’s not so radical, considering it’s a story about a man harnessing a criminal mindset to go outside of the system to pay his debt. His approach is to inspect this question on a micro, man-to-man level, but extrapolated to the macro, it’s damning to consider the many life-or-death deals left unfulfilled in Afghanistan.
MPA rating: R (for violence, language throughout and brief drug content)
Running time: 2:03
How to watch: In theaters