The Covenant

It's refreshing to see Guy Ritchie tackle a more serious topic instead of his usual pop culture-heavy fare. The Covenant is a solid piece of filmmaking. The story of Afghan translators deserves attention — they risk not just their lives but also the safety of their loved ones. The film perfectly captures the war-torn atmosphere and delivers flawless action sequences, all underscored by a strong sense of honor. And as any man can attest, honor is the highest virtue we can offer. (12/23/2023)

I love Jake Gyllenhaal, I love Guy Ritchie, and I love war movies, so I kind of assumed I would like The Covenant, but I didn't expect it to be such a high quality and complex film. Ritchie is an incredibly talented, because to make things like Sherlock Holmes, Aladdin, Wrath of Man, and a war like The Covenant, and to do it all in such quality and scope, with feeling, with a sense of the genre and with a perfect choice of actors, literally nobody can do that. I hugely appreciate the complexity and multi-dimensional quality of The Covenant, as it combines war action, chases through the Afghan mountains (the visuals are breathtaking!!) and steamy drama along with a story based on real events, and when I add to that a brilliant musical score and the damn talented Dar Salim, who steals scene for himself and quite possibly outshines even Gyllenhaal, I come up with an excellent flick that will please a wide range of audiences without a doubt. Ritchie, you're a god! (05/14/2023)

Testosterone meets character. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant outshines Berg’s pure-blooded action genre flick Lone Survivor because it is not merely a pure-blooded action genre flick. Ritchie offers a more powerful story, or rather he is able to draw a dramatically deeper spectacle with intellectual reach out of the story that he has at hand. The shooting is of secondary importance. The Covenant is well cast and Jake Gyllenhaal turns in another fantastic performance. The buddy motif with Dar Salim is minimalist in gestures but all the more powerful at its core. Commitments and principles in a bulletproof man code. (05/19/2023)

A macho story about commitments that are really important in life and should be fulfilled. With a minimum of words, but an ideal amount of gestures and decent music as support. Ritchie's directorial finesse is nowhere near Spielberg's or Scott's, so the gunfights are rather generic, full of annoyingly digital effects (what else could we ask for 55 million dollars?) and certainly not the main draw of the film, but at least he delivers another solid adult film with emotions, suspense and without pathos after post-modern bullshit like King Arthur or Sherlock Holmes. The Covenant will probably get lost among war movies because there’s is too little war and the depiction of Eastern terrorists is not as catchy and dynamic as in, say, The Kingdom, nor as meticulously detailed as in Zero Dark Thirty, but in terms of content, it is is relatively strong, simple and straightforward. (06/02/2023)

Guy Ritchie has become an unexpectedly interesting filmmaker in recent years, making a "smaller", gritty and honest-to-goodness film here and there in addition to crafting decently done commercial stuff. After The Gentlemen and Wrath of Man comes The Covenant, which isn't necessarily the best of the aforementioned trio, but at least manages to translate a whiff of creative verve into the viewing experience. In the first half, Ritchie delivers an almost procedural war drama, only to switch into John Woo mode in the second half with his over-the-top bromance action, culminating in a fetishistically long montage of the immeasurable physical and emotional effort one partner can make to save another. (05/28/2023)