Worth: $17.00
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Cast:
Jake Gyllenhaal, Dar Salim, Jonny Lee Miller, Antony Starr, Alexander Ludwig
Intro:
...as entertaining and exciting as it is thought provoking.
Classily adept at slick Brit-crime thrillers and high-style entertainments (see Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, RocknRolla, Sherlock Holmes, The Gentlemen, Wrath Of Man and so on), writer/director Guy Ritchie delivers what could safely be termed as his first real-world, “serious” film with The Covenant, and he takes as his thematic grist one of the greatest US and allied military heartless oversights in recent years: the abandonment of the many brave Afghanis who worked as interpreters and aides during the west’s attempted routing of The Taliban in that battle-wracked nation.
Seemingly seconds after the US and its allies pulled out of Afghanistan, The Taliban were back in power, and those that had helped in the fight against them were pretty much left high and dry, subject to persecution, torture and murder. Ritchie’s just passion and indignation on this issue are burningly obvious in every frame of The Covenant, which he combines with his innate sense of action and pacing to create a film as entertaining and exciting as it is thought provoking.
Master Sergeant John Kinley (strong, convincing, physical and slyly funny work from Jake Gyllenhaal) is a hardened US military man with a wealth of combat experience. Stern, but fair and decent, he always looks out for his men, but navigates a spiky relationship with his squad’s headstrong new Afghani interpreter Ahmed (the utterly superb Dar Salim, who oozes intensity and charisma), who has an in-depth knowledge of their dangerous surrounds, as well as a toughness and ingenuity to rival any of his US superiors. When Kinley and his team is ambushed, it is Ahmed who ultimately rescues his boss, and the pair embark on a horrific journey to safety across harsh terrain, with the formidable forces of The Taliban in hot pursuit.
With echoes of Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor and (this is meant in a good way) the earnest, socially conscious work of Hollywood master Stanley Kramer, Ritchie’s The Covenant is unapologetically the co-writer/director’s vision of how the US military should have treated its Afghani allies. Though Gyllenhaal’s John Kinley is far from flawless, his commitment to do the right thing and honour his debts is certainly the kind of quality we’d all like to see in our soldiers, especially when held against the obfuscation and duplicitous game-playing of his superiors in the film.
While Ritchie enjoyably refuses to soft-pedal or humanise The Taliban (they’re pretty much just there to be shot, kind of like the endless parade of Nazis who get hilariously mowed down by Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare) and has a few barbed comments to hurl at the US military, his faith in and admiration for the decent people who get caught up in the gears of war is plainly clear, with Dar Salim’s Ahmed a wonderfully heroic and likeable character.
While certainly no Three Kings, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is a thrilling, emotionally resonant, and very smartly executed piece of war/action cinema with just enough bite to really get a grip on you.
