"Guy Ritchie's The Covenant": review

Ahmed Abdullah Yousfi (Dar Salim) and Master Sgt. John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal)

[Language note: normally, you italicize the titles of completed works and use quotation marks for named sections in that work. A book of poetry might be called Synthetic Jungle (a real collection by Michael Chang), and a poem within it might be titled "Caducity" (a real poem in that collection). See how that works? Italics for the collection title, quotes for the poem title. In my case, I use quotes for movie titles because it's a convention I've seen in journalistic writing, and what started as a habit has become tradition. So from my perspective, you either italicize a film title or surround it with quotation marks. But what do you do when a film title has a title within the title? I did the only thing that made sense: I surrounded the larger title with quotes and italicized the title-within-a-title. Maybe it's not the best editorial decision I've ever made, but it'll do for now. If you have a better solution, leave it in the comments.]

When you think of a Guy Ritchie film, your mind probably goes to "Snatch," to "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," or more recently, to "The Gentlemen"—stylized films about British gangsters speaking profanely in heavy Cockney accents. Ritchie is, in many ways, the godfather of the revival of British mob movies. And when he's gone beyond that comfort zone to make, for example, his pair of Sherlock Holmes movies (bravely casting the American Robert Downey Jr. in that most English of roles), he has still retained a sense of whiz-bang style. So what should we make of "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant," which despite having "Guy Ritchie" in the title, is arguably the most un-Guy Ritchie film in his oeuvre? (For brevity's sake, I'll be calling this film "The Covenant" from now on.) "The Covenant" is a simple, straightforward action film with a relatively linear plot quite unlike the convoluted, ten-subplot stories in Ritchie's gangster movies. 

In a nutshell: US Army Master Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his interpreter Ahmed Abdullah Yousfi (Dar Salim) are the only survivors of an ambush in Afghanistan. The two evade pursuit for a while, but the Taliban catches up and manages to wound and capture the sergeant. Ahmed rescues John, then carts him painfully across rugged, mountainous territory to Bagram Air Base. John is shipped home; Ahmed, who had taken the interpreter job to get himself and his family visas to move to the States, is left swinging in the wind by Uncle Sam, a top target of the Taliban for aiding the Americans. Master Sergeant Kinley, daily suffering from nightmares and attacks of conscience, decides to go back to Afghanistan to rescue the man who had saved his life. With very little in the way of uttered promises, the eponymous covenant of the movie's title refers to the obvious sense of unspoken obligation that these two men feel toward each other. Despite being an action film, the story's pacing is slow and deliberate, with plenty of character-building moments woven into the plot.

In all, this is a solid action film that looks as if it had been directed by someone other than Guy Ritchie. The plot doesn't jump around from place to place, and the only time we see any hints of Ritchie's usual visual style is when Kinley is delirious from his wounds and from smoking opium to dull the pain. For the film's production, the region around Alicante, Spain, doubles as Afghanistan. I suppose a savvy person familiar with Spain and Afghanistan could easily point out differences in topography, plant life, etc., but Spain was a good enough Afghanistan for me. Some of the action set pieces are fairly grandiose. The site of the ambush at the beginning of the movie is a huge mine; the big fight at the movie's conclusion takes place at an imposing-looking dam. The movie also contains moments of wry humor, much of it military-tinged. Once the ambush happens, the plot's focus narrows tightly on our two leads, with Dar Salim—an Iraqi-born Dane—looking a hell of a lot like Temuera Morrison and delivering his lines in a stoic way that is vaguely reminiscent of Morrison's style.

If I could fault the movie for one thing, though, that one thing would be the plot's utter predictability. I could see the story beats ten steps before they happened, so watching the movie was often just a case of me waiting for the action to catch up to my predictions. There were no real narrative twists, no real surprises, and with almost everyone dead within the first fifth of the film, you knew that the remaining stars would be protected by plot armor, surviving to the end. Perhaps adding a random, Tarantino-style sudden death of a main character might have spiced up the narrative somewhat. Then again, the story's focus was on the theme indicated by the movie's title: the bond between two men who, at first, have something of a prickly relationship, but who come to respect each other deeply.

Gyllenhaal and Salim carry most of the movie and do a great job. Thank God for Gyllenhaal's beard, which lends him dignity and some visual proportion: I often find myself thinking the actor, when clean-shaven, looks a bit goofy with his puppy-dog eyes, swooping nose, and long face—a face made for comedy, not military dramas. That said, Gyllenhaal is no stranger to military roles, having played soldiers in "Source Code" and "Jarhead," so he knows how to carry himself in this film. Dar Salim is new to me, but he proved to be a talented conveyor of emotions whether speaking or being silent. I hope to see him in many more major roles. It took a while for me to recognize Anthony Starr (Homelander in "The Boys"), but he plays Eddie Parker, the private contractor who helps Kinley get back into Afghanistan to find Ahmed. Emily Beecham plays John's wife Caroline, and she doesn't quite pull off the generic American accent: there's something a bit off about her delivery that made me look her up online and discover that, yup, she's a British actress. It's rare to find a Brit or Aussie who hasn't quite mastered the American accent, which usually comes easily to thespians who speak some version of the King's English. That said, Beecham is fine in her role as the sympathetic and tough Caroline, who has reconciled herself to the fact that her husband won't be deterred from going back to Afghanistan to rescue Salim. Finally, I have to mention Iranian-Spanish actress Fariba Sheikhan, who plays Basira, Ahmed's wife. A bit like Golshifteh Farahani, Sheikhan is achingly, distractingly beautiful. Basira doesn't play a very important role in the plot, being more of a plot device than a fleshed-out character, but you definitely notice her.

The movie's biggest surprise came with the title card at the end—a massive indictment of Joe Biden's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left so many interpreters and their families high and dry, targets for the vengeful Taliban. The card says: "30 August, 2021: the US Armed Forces completed their departure from Afghanistan, marking the end of a 20-year-long campaign. One month later, the Taliban seized back complete control. More than 300 interpreters and their families have been murdered by the Taliban for collaborating with the US military. Thousands more are still in hiding." Although this story was a work of fiction, I realized that it was meant as a sad tribute to the souls who have been left behind to suffer evil, and that real-world connection gave the film an added poignancy. As the credits roll, photos of actual US soldiers and their interpreters appear onscreen.

While "The Covenant" is by-the-numbers predictable, and its final third will remind older viewers of the movie "The Killing Fields"—in which a guilt-ridden Sydney Schanberg does what he can while Stateside to find and rescue interpreter Dith Pran (who ultimately rescues himself)—it's also a good, solid action film with a decent message about how different people can feel a bond, a sense of obligation, and can be there for each other in a crisis. On one level, this is just an action movie, but unlike your typical action movie, it calls us to be better than we normally are—to go the extra mile for others when they need help, to feel that human sense of commitment and conscience that can unite people from very different backgrounds. See the movie with my blessing.

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ADDENDUM: another excellent Green Berets reaction video:

It's fun watching them dump on Chris Pratt and "The Terminal List." I have new respect for Jake Gyllenhaal's professionalism in this role.