The Covenant Movie Review

“The Covenant” is a war movie by Director Guy Ritchie. So, it is also known as “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant”. Ritchie mainly has been successful with violent crime dramas that include a lot of brutal action. But now Richie gets a handle on the most violent and brutal action of all – wartime. But his focus is on a relationship of trust and honor between two men from very different backgrounds.

Sergeant John Kinley (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is stationed in Afghanistan. He has been on his fourth tour of duty for the U.S. Army. In late 2018, everyone is tired of being there. The soldiers in his squad look up to John, but they know there can be danger at any checkpoint or up any alleyway. The well-trained team needs to rely on an interpreter who can cross the language barrier.

During a road checkpoint stop, one of his soldiers and the current interpreter are killed in a terrorist bombing. John Kinley talks with Colonel Vokes (played by Jonny Lee Miller) who heads up the air base. Vokes find a few local men with training. One of them can be hired as a new squad-based translator and communicator. Johns meets one man named Ahmed (played by Dar Salim), and they agree to work together.

The Taliban are still very active in the country, and John’s team works to find places where the bad guys make bombs. Sometimes they go out on a mission, and the team comes home empty-handed. They are about to leave for an area around one hundred miles from the base. They have not found anything so far. But Ahmed thinks that the old mining operation has more going on than what the soldiers can see.

Ahmed is correct, of course, and soon the Taliban site for making improvised bombs is crawling with armed terrorists. They had walked into a trap, and the entire squad is overrun. All of his soldiers are killed, except for John Kinley and Ahmed. They take off onto the rough mountain terrain, with small groups of Taliban fighters tailing them. They make their way to an old abandoned dwelling.

The Taliban fighters track them down, and John is captured. He is wounded and badly hurt. He is about to be taken away to become a Taliban hostage. But Ahmed was holding back, until there comes a time where he sneaks up on John’s captors. John has been rescued by Ahmed. But there is no time to celebrate. John is still near death, and they are both many miles away from the air base.

Ahmed uses all of his ingenuity to make a gurney so that John can be moved. They are in a terrible position, moving on foot in enemy territory. But Ahmed is strong and resilient. He finds a way to transport a very weak John back to safety. At first, Ahmed is pulling him on the gurney. Then he is using a truck he stole from the Taliban. Ahmed is able to trade the truck for a push cart. He uses the cart to move John over the steep mountain passes.

Ahmed is able to get John Kinley back to the U.S. air base. They are both called heroes. John is sent back home to America. There he is able to recover from the wounds. His wife, Caroline (played by Emily Beecham) is concerned because John is not able to heal from the wounds of guilt. During the days that John was missing, Caroline did know if he was dead. But that is now how John feels on the inside.

John was able to leave, but his new partner Ahmed is stuck. He and his family are in hiding from the Taliban. He is a most-wanted traitor to them, and his family is marked for death. The U.S. military would be ready to get his family a visa and safe passage to the States. But nobody can find him. John talks with Colonel Vokes and makes sure that the visas can be secured. John takes in upon himself to go back to Afghanistan to locate Ahmed.

John has a military contact named Sergeant Declan Brady (played by Alexander Ludwig). Brady has been able to find out a little more about the whereabouts of Ahmed. Brady also knows a military contractor named Eddie Parker (played by Antony Starr). Parker says that for the right price, he can help to get Ahmed and his family out of danger. The cost is steep, but is a cost that John is willing to pay.

John owns his life to Ahmed, and the things he did to save him during that ordeal in the mountains. John tells Caroline he would not be alive if it were not for Ahmed. He must go back and do everything he can to save him. Caroline agrees, but she wishes it did not have to be so. It could be a long and dangerous mission, and John might not make it out alive. But he knows he must repay Ahmed for all that he did to save him.

John Kinley ventures back to Afghanistan. Declan Brady set up a meeting with John and Parker. Parker tells him that a new mission has come up. John can wait until that other mission is complete, and then they can all go to find and rescue Ahmed. John is not willing to wait. He goes to find Ahmed and his family, all on his own. Parker says they can back him up – once John finds him. But the Taliban are on his trail, again. Will John get to Ahmed before the goons of the Taliban take them both out?

“The Covenant” is an excellent study of how these two men bond during a tense and stressful situation. The action is top-notch and realistic. Both Jake Gyllenhaal (John) and Dar Salim (Ahmed) have a high level of intensity. They work together very well in this movie. The rest of the cast is also good, but the main focus is on John and Ahmed.

Guy Ritchie, who also helped to write the screenplay, is a master of action sequences and portraying violence on the screen. Every action scene is clearly defined and is easy to tell where all the characters are going. All the Taliban soldiers are pretty much portrayed as nothing but faceless evil-doers. But that makes sense from the perspective of John and Ahmed. They always seem to be outnumbered by an endless swarm of killers.

“The Covenant” is new look at an old problem – war. It shows that sometimes, in extreme circumstances, two men can rely on each other and fight their way out of a quagmire. The deep respect and trust they have is inspiring.