It makes sense to approach Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant cautiously. The execrable Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a glaring example of how lazy and listless the director’s output can be. Don’t worry. GRTC is worth your time.
It’s another in a long-running cycle of war movies about US guilt, aiming for something along the lines of American Sniper but slipping closer to the Rambo franchise. Here US Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) is rescued from certain death at the hands of the Taliban by his Afghan interpretor Ahmed (Dar Salim). When Ahmed’s visa to the US is ensnared in bureaucracy, Kinley returns to Afghanistan to retrieve Ahmed and his family.
Gung ho in the extreme, GRTC is more than a genre exercise thanks to committed acting, a stripped-down screenplay (by Ritchie and his usual cohorts Ivan Atkinson & Marn Davies), and Ritchie’s outstanding filmmaking. He’s rarely this energized, or this careful.
Gyllenhaal gives a wonderful performance, fleshing out Kinley’s character even if it means showing the sergeant’s failings. You can see the soldier’s response to the violence he encounters in the actor’s face. Kinley is reluctant to give Ahmed any credit, in part because he’s suspicious of all Afghans. A former heroin dealer, Ahmed has a much deeper understanding of Afghanistan than Kinley will ever achieve. He’s also far more brutal.
Ritchie depicts their relationship efficiently, without forcing an emotional connection between the two and minimizing details about their private lives. Then the director stages a superb firefight between American troops and Taliban bombmakers in an abandoned mine. Tense, precise, convincing, the battle makes clear everything that’s at stake for Kinley and Ahmed.
The two go on the run across some seventy miles of hostile terrain, pursued by replenished Taliban fighters. When Kinley is wounded, it’s up to Ahmed to drag him across mountain passes to safety.
Shipped back to the States, Kinley spends weeks trying to secure visas for Ahmed, now on the Taliban’s most wanted list. It’s the weakest section of the film because it shifts the focus to military bungling rather that concentrating on Ahmed’s efforts to survive.
Kinley mortgages his business to return to Afghanistan and find Ahmed. Here Ritchie regains his footing, building first-rate sequences that unfold from three separate points-of-view. The ending is especially satisfying, even with a title reminding us that too many interpreters remained trapped and in hiding from the Taliban.
Ed Wild’s cinematography brings out the scope of Ritchie’s movie. He builds excellent extended takes while helping the director keep a firm grasp on the geography of the action. James Herbert’s editing is also very good, although the score by Christopher Benstead can be too on-the-nose.
Do we need another fictional account of a real-life incident from the Afghan war? Maybe not, but Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is so well executed that it rises above most of its competition.
An MGM release opening theatrically April 21, 2023. Photo: Dar Salim (left) as Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal (right) as Sgt. John Kinley. Credit: Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures© 2023 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Starring | Jake Gyllenhaal, Dar Salim, Antony Starr, Alexander Ludwig, Bobby Schofield with Emily Beecham and Jonny Lee Miller
Directed by | Guy Ritchie
Written by | Guy Ritchie and Ivan Atkinson & Marn Davies
