The Covenant (2023)

Guy Ritchie's second feature of 2023 claims it's for the all the interpreters who were involved in the Afghanistan war, that stretched for twenty years until America's withdrawal in 2021. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal as army sergeant John Kinley, who, after his unit's interpreter is killed, calls on Dar Salim's Ahmed to replace him. What follows is strange couple of hours; after a firefight with the Taliban, which decimates his entire unit apart from himself and Ahmed, the pair are forced to flee across dangerous terrain with a price on their heads. Eventually, they're tracked down and Kinley is shot, but before the Taliban can finish him off, Ahmed guns down the raiding party, saving Kinley's life. He then drags Kinley miles across mountainous territory back to safety, and the final portion of the film pertains to Kinley's efforts to extract Ahmed and his family from Afghanistan and securing them visas for passage to the USA. There are things to admire about The Covenant, the sweeping vistas of Ed Wild's cinematography make for some stunning scenery, and it has always been interesting when Ritchie veers away from his proffered geezer/gangster pictures although they often come with varying results. Unfortunately The Covenant is a real mishmash of a film, and can't quite decide what it wants to be. It needs to either be half an hour shorter or a half hour longer, but ends up being sandwiched in between, meaning that it's not long enough to pull off the emotional pay off it needs to in the films final quarter, resulting in several ludicrous montage sequences that pull you out of the film entirely. Combined with a smattering of wooden dialogue throughout the picture, Ritchie's film ends up being quite literally half decent; Dar Salim is particularly impressive as interpreter Ahmed and Gyllenhaal is always reliable, but once again Ritchie's ill-discipline costs him; and despite the film at times resembling Peter Berg's surprisingly effective Lone Survivor (2013), The Covenant isn't on the same level, which is a shame.

5.9/10