Master Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim), become two of the Taliban’s most wanted as the Afghan War rages on.  Having survived an ambush, though not without taking on significant injuries, Ahmed delivers Kinley back to the US Air Base so that the soldier can return home, gaining a folk hero persona in the process and inspiring hope among the people.  Meanwhile, Ahmed must take his family deep into hiding from the constant threat of severe retaliation by the Taliban for aiding the United States military.  When Kinley learns that Ahmed is living as a fugitive in his home country and was unable to be located to receive the special visas he is owed that would allow his family access to the United States, he makes it his personal mission to bring his indebted interpreter and his family to safety. 

Guy Ritchie attaches his name to the title of The Covenant, a war film that he directs from a co-written script with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies.  While not based on a true story, the MGM/United Artists released film acts almost as a moral fable about the effects of war as its pulls from true facts and creates a fiction around them and tried to draw up some kind of conclusion.  As far as a wartime action film goes, Ritchie is able to achieve some pretty solid success, but as a social commentary on the war, The Covenant is rather blunt and lacking in nuance.   

The structure of the film is surprisingly transformative for what looks like an otherwise run-of-the-mill war film.  It starts off like a bro-hang back at the base and as Kinley’s unit traverses the countryside while they jest and rib at each other with some of the worst bantering dialogue in recent memory. It is all so contrived and while it very well may be true to life, hearing it and seeing it on the big screen is just an uncomfortable experience all around because it is all just veiled insults back and forth peppered with light misogyny and homophobia. Because of this abrasiveness, the characters cannot begin to build any real relationships with each other besides that they are all in this war together and it makes it incredibly difficult for us as an audience to learn who these people are and why we should care about them any more than because they are who the camera is pointed at.

Thankfully, when the unit arrives at the mine, the film takes on its first major tone shift and it gives way to a pulse-pounding set piece as Kinley’s unit uncovers an explosives ring before being ambushed by the Taliban. Ritchie is able to capitalize on his skills as an action filmmaker, but what is notable is that these sequences are not filmed with his usual flair and flourishes, rather they are competently recorded for a change and the director seems to have challenged himself with this film to make the sequences stand on their own instead of relying on quippy writing and heavily stylized maneuvers. Ed Wild’s camera work here, and also in the final showdown, splits its time perfectly between close to the action and wide shots that show us the scope of the battlefields and, coupled with James Herbert’s editing of these sequences, the team does a really great job at transporting audiences from their cinema seats.  

The film then takes on a much simpler, yet still danger-filled, interlude in which Ahmed transports the injured Kinley back to his base. Taking on a perverse buddy/road format, this is the part of the film with the most heart. It becomes a bit of a one-hander as Kinley’s condition renders him little more than cargo to be hidden away, and it allows Salim to really flex as a performer that can control the screen. He finds a balance as a dramatic lead, but also an action hero in some high stakes/high tension sequences whenever he must test the waters with new people which he encounters on his journey to discover if they are friends or foes. This section is really the strongest of the film, but unfortunately, the nuance is lost as Ritchie over-employs Christopher Benstead’s blasting score across the duration of this 123-minute film, especially here, as if he does not trust his audience to find engaging elements in these quieter scenes and stay connected to the film. 

As with all things, after reaching the highest point, the only way to go is downhill and what follows in The Covenant is a real slog of a transition. Back home and recovering, Gyllenhaal plays Kinley as a sleepwalker – unaware, unfazed, and unaffected – and while coloring this performance with shades of depression may have been on purpose, it does not come across as such on screen as Ritchie and his writing team reveal themselves as not truly interested in the aftereffects of war. This is where the film could have started to take on the treatment of our veterans; it does not. Instead, it brings focus back to Ahmed and his family and the visas they are owed. This is where the film could have started to take on the absolute nightmare that is our immigration policy; it does not. Ritchie is in a rush to get back to the dusty streets of Afghanistan where Gyllenhaal and the American Army can ride through like kings. To his credit, the film is not as grossly pro-war as the summary sounds, but it certainly gives combat a softball treatment like it is just a guy’s trip with some explosions thrown in there for good measure. 

The final act of the film is just an intensification of the first. Gyllenhaal gets to talk a big game and play vigilante, and while it is nice to see him bring some life back to his performance, audiences can be understandably bored in the retread. After some slinking around back alleys and darkened houses, Ritchie does treat audiences to a similarly exciting set piece to cap off the film, so as a textbook blockbuster template, The Covenant is quite good; it is just a film that is totally defined by its highs and lows with no middle ground. Frustrating as the ending may be given some of the concessions and concluding choices, it is hard to stay too mad at the film as everything was neatly set up for this exact payoff – and, with full disclosure, Ritchie is able to instill a sense of excitement in the finale as it highlights the back and forth teamwork between Kinley and Ahmed which was our window into the first half of the film. If Ritchie’s script was not so formally sound, The Covenant would be a total disaster, but as it stands it is just a perfectly forgettable experience; enjoyable in the moment but purged from the mind by the time the credits finish rolling.