Covenant,The

Guy Ritchie is not a director you’d expect to be helming a film about the American invasion of post-9/11 Afghanistan yet the result Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (perhaps there is some kind of copyright issue behind the ungainly title) is surprisingly satisfying. If by no means evidence of the director’s newly discovered political awareness it lends some moral substance to his characteristic appetite for convoluted laddish crime capers whilst at the same time in the crowd-pleasing form of a high-tension action film drawing attention to the USA’s shameful failure in the region.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays John Kinley a US Army Sergeant on his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan who is frustrated by his job of finding and terminating Taliban arms manufactories. As he and his colleagues have no knowledge of the language and culture of the region, their job is not only highly dangerous but well-nigh impossible. Kinley is assigned a translator, Ahmed (Dar Salim), one of the many Afghanis  who have been promised passports and visas to the United States for themselves and their families in return for collaborating with the Americans a role which puts both his life and that of his family in serious jeopardy.   

Following on from Richie’s previous film Wrath of Man (2021) The Covenant, with which it shares the same co-writers (Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies), editor James Herbert and composer Christopher Benstead is an aesthetic companion piece to that film. Both in their way are revenge thrillers involving a protagonist exacting vengeance for the death of a son (and in the case of The Covenant, 9/11).  

If Wrath of Man was wanting somewhat in the dramatics stakes, in The Covenant, particularly thanks to the focussed performances of Gyllenhaal and Salim who are effectively co-leads, we engage with the developing relationship between the two men with Kinley in particular learning much about what hitherto had been to him a nameless presence. In this respect The Covenant could also be described as a buddy movie, albeit with an unusually high level of fire-power.

With Spain standing in for Afghanistan, Ritchie and his production designer and art director John Martyn (another alumnus of Wrath of Man) attains a high level of verisimilitude (although one can’t help wondering how Ahmed became such a skilled killing machine) so much so that one expects to be informed in the end credits that it was based on a true story but, no it is a fiction.

Some may fault The Covenant for shortchanging audiences on the realities of the geo-political aspects of America’s invasion of Afghanistan but let’s not get too strident in our demands. In laying out his story in an audience-pleasing form (particularly its nail-biting, here-comes-the-cavalry climactic flight from the crazed Taliban) Ritchie get his message across more succinctly and probably with more coverage than more didactic works would have achieved.

 

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