- Starring
- Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Wong, Rhys Yates, Christian Ochoa Lavernia
- Director
- Guy Ritchie
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Action, Drama, Thriller, War
- Release date
- April 21, 2023
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
On August 30, 2021, under the criminally inept direction of President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., the U.S. Military was forced to make a strategically erroneous and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a result, not only did we leave billions of dollars worth of the world’s most sophisticated weaponry behind to be used by those who have sworn to destroy us, not only did we abandon the people of Afghanistan to the brutal subjugation of the Taliban, but we also turned our back on thousands of translators and other native allies who have since been murdered or, if they are lucky, are still in hiding and in constant fear for their lives and for the lives of their families. That brings us to Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.
Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
It’s hard to believe that the same man responsible for the trash that was Operation Fortune could have had anything to do with this thrilling and powerful piece about loyalty and what it means to be a man of honor. However, Guy Ritchie put on his big-boy pants and, together with some excellent performances by its leads, delivered a war movie with as much heart as it has explosions. Furthermore, the heart hits harder than the mortars…if only just.
Without spoiling too much, The Covenant follows a group of military specialists, led by Master Sergeant John Kinley, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Their specialty is tracking down and neutralizing I.E.D (Improvised Explosive Devices) “factories,” and they are good at what they do. On one such mission, everything goes t!t$ up, and Master Sergeant Kinley is severely injured. Fast forward several weeks and Kinley is haunted by a debt that he now owes one of his men.
With outstanding and tension-building pacing, economical dialogue, and excellent performances, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is a deceptively simple story that uses every part of the buffalo. There’s no gratuitous and melodramatic use of slow-motion, and Ritchie and Company use every camera angle and explosion to make you feel as though you are there with the characters. A restrained Guy Ritchie might just be one h3!! of a filmmaker.
Every performer, from Gyllenhall to the extras is one-hundred percent invested in the present, which only serves to draw the audience in further. What’s more is that the leads expertly play experienced men of war, so much so that the subtlest crack shown in their emotional armor is made devastating to the audience. We feel exactly what they want us to feel when they want us to feel it, and it’s a refreshing and much-needed change from what’s become the malaise of being “blown away” by “incredible” CGI or “chuckling at the newest and darkest humorous way to explode a person.
Speaking of CGI, it was used so sparingly and adroitly and then only to augment the practical effects that the audience isn’t once taken out of the moment to applaud the special effects. That may be the best thing about this movie, all of the components are weaved together in such a way that from the opening title card to the closing, audiences get to experience the pleasure of thoroughly enjoying a movie as a visceral experience, just like we used to.
When the shrapnel settles and the drones land, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is a must-see war pic that we are gratified to mark as Worth it.
EDITORIAL
In the excerpt, I mention that audiences will be p!$$ed off by this movie, and rightly so. That’s because the crux of the film is about how our government treated those brave Afghanis who put their lives on the line to aid our troops in defeating the evil that is the Taliban. In 2021, the Biden administration threw them away, and it’s a stain of blood on our national honor that won’t soon be wiped away.
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James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
Amazing movie. And bless you for this website, I can’t say how amazing this is. As for the movie, I love how at the end it’s throwing the finger to Biden and his party for leaving so many people behind, who deserved so much to be here in the USA. A real shame showing how hard these people worked to help us who were just left behind to be hunted by the Taliban. What a great movie, showing the bond between brothers. A very powerful movie. It’s my best of 2023 so far.
I knew nothing about this movie before watching it, and assumed that it was going to be another Hollywood hit piece.
I couldn’t believe that they included that closing title card.
We’re looking forward to more from Guy Ritchie. I never thought that I’d say that.
Thanks for your comment and support!
Great review man, i saw it and it was really good, I’m also surprised this came from Guy Ritchie for sure his more mature work
The marketing on TikTok has been annoying AF. They have been paying for fake reviews of this movie and I have stayed away from it because of those issues. You have persuaded to take a look at it.
Love your site!
tiktok should not even be on your last list for any reviews of anything, hell even rotten tomatoes is not trustworthy seeing as Disney is trying to force RT to “hide” negative reviews. Hence sites like this are VITAL in giving alternate reviews of media being spewed out of WokeyWood these days. Another movie that i will have a watch thanks to this site.
I have to admit, seeing Guy Ritchie “presents” the movie and Jake Gyllenhall as the lead, I was a little nervous as to the “wokeness” factor we would see. However, I was pleasantly surprised (and, yes, pi$$ed off) at the even-handedness of the story and the acting.
Just found your site and I plan to check it out whenever my wife and I plan to see a movie. As Seniors trying to scrape by, the last thing I want to do is to waste $20 on a movie that will make me cringe over the current state of Woke!
Of course it’s woke. It’s the left pushing for citizenship of Afghan interpreters. To try and portray that an Afghan man would go to these lengths to save an American soldier is just ridiculous. I’m all for their citizenship but don’t treat people like idiots. I admit I only watched half the film, but on realising a film is being cast for pure agenda is frankly boring and unrealistic.
Great movie. I watched it twice. I thought it was about the cameraderie between men who worked with each other in a hostile environment only to be separated by a potato in charge of a country that ran with its tail between its legs because the bastard Commander in Chief had promised to do so years before. Now $8bn worth of arms were left and 100’s were left to be killed or to suffer retribution by the taliban for them helping the Americans. Its not woke. It shows from a view which is non-American the shitstorm that Biden and his goons did to that part of the world. Good film.
+1 to this one. Great film – and true story I think. No woke, degenerate or anti-white stuff in it at all. It does suspend the entire questionable reasons on why we were in Afghanistan (Iraq, Middle East) in the first place but that’s not he soldiers’ fault of course so we thank them for their service. Great film, great acting – I guess Hollywood can churn out a good one every so often.
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