While he is mostly known for his British crime movies,Guy Ritchie’s The Covenantis a showcase of how the filmmaker can step outside of his typical fare and deliver something truly great. Guy Ritchie burst onto the scene in the 1990s with his British indie crime comedyLock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. His funny, fresh, and energetic take on the genre was replicated many times over withSnatch, RocknRolla,andThe Gentlemenwhile also moving into television withThe Gentlemenseries and thenew Paramount+ showMobLandwith Tom Hardy.
British crime stories are where Ritchie seems comfortable, and his fans are always eager for his return to the genre, butGuy Ritchie’s The Covenantproves he should not be limited to one kind of movie. The 2023 movie is set during the War in Afghanistan and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as John Kinley, an American soldier, and Dar Salim as Ahmed Abdullah, an Afghani interpreter. The movie not only brought something new to the modern war movie genre but also showcased a new kind of movie and storytelling from Ritchie that proved more versatility than he is given credit for.
The Covenant Is A Complete Departure From Guy Ritchie’s Most Successful Work
Ritchie’s British Crime Movies Are Beloved By Fans
While the recent seriesThe GentlemenandMobLandprove that Guy Ritchie still has a lot of love for the British crime genre,The Covenantdoes feel like a conscious move on his part to make a movie completely different from what he is known for. Just from the outset, this seems apparent. Ritchie has always been drawn to the gritty street-level characters of his movies, examining the underbelly of London in hugely entertaining ways. Few things could seem further from that world than heading out to the tense and undefined battlefield of Afghanistan at war.
With Ritchie also writingThe Covenant, alongside Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, it is also a departure from his distinct voice. Ritchie’s most popular movies are known for their whip-sharp dialogue with rapid-fire delivery of slang and one-liners, adding a comedic energy to the stories. Even in movies that differ from his crime stories, likeKing Arthur: Legend of the SwordandSherlock Holmes, Ritchie’s voice is still very much present in the dialogue.
While most of Ritchie’s films are quite verbose with witty lines,The Covenantvery much deals with unspoken ideas.
That is not the case withThe Covenant, which shows Ritchie’s comfort with telling a very different story. Obviously, British slang would have no place in a story like this, so the dialogue inThe Covenanthas a much different feel without feeling like someone from outside of this world trying to imagine what American and Afghani soldiers might say. However, more interesting is how Ritchie avoids dialogue in the movie. While most of Ritchie’s films are quite verbose with witty lines,The Covenantvery much deals with unspoken ideas.
John and Ahmed work together, but they don’t see eye-to-eye, yet they share an unspoken connection as soldiers. There is a moment following the pivotal ambush when John and Ahmed, on the run from the Taliban, take a moment to rest and regroup. It is also a moment when John can finally take a beat to mourn his fallen comrades. He battles his anger and grief wordlessly as Ahmed watches silently. He is sympathetic because he knows what John is going through, but he also knows there’s nothing he can do to help, so they say nothing to each other.
There has never been a scene in any of Ritchie’s other movies that allows a moment like this to pass without any dialogue, but it makes for one of the most powerful scenes he has ever written or directed.
Ritchie Brought A New Perspective To The War Movie
The Covenant Blends Respect For The Soldiers And Criticism Of The War
Not only isThe Covenanta noticeable departure from the movies Guy Ritchie is known for, but I initially suspected the movie would be a massive misstep for the filmmaker and a huge mistake. Based on his previous work, Ritchie’s style of action filmmaking, his sense of humor, and his dialogue seemed completely wrong for a movie like this. What’s more,The Covenant’s marketing made it seem like the kind of movie that Peter Berg or Michael Bay would direct.
Ritchie was also clearly not interested in painting the whole picture with a celebratory brush as the movie is also heavily critical of the United States military’s operations in Afghanistan.
While Berg and Bay have similarly established a certain wheelhouse for those kinds of movies, I was confused as to why Ritchie would want to step into this world, which he seemed so outside of. As it turns out, it was that perspective of an outsider that helped makeThe Covenantso special. While modern war movies, likeAmerican SniperandLone Survivor, have been praised for their depiction of the soldiers who fight, they have also been criticized for their jingoistic approaches, whitewashing the complex reality of the United States' wars of the 21st century.
At its center,The Covenantis a storyabout the bravery and loyalty of these soldiers, a message it communicates quite effectively. However, Ritchie was also clearly not interested in painting the whole picture with a celebratory brush, as the movie is also heavily critical of the United States military’s operations in Afghanistan. Specifically, it addresses how Afghani translators put their lives and the lives of their families in danger by working with the American military in an area controlled by the Taliban, but when the Americans left, they abandoned these Afghani people to their fates.
With the final title card at theend ofThe Covenant, Ritchie calls out the disloyalty of the military while also showing images of American soldiers and Afghani soldiers who formed bonds and friendships as soldiers. In the end,Ritchie’s perspective allowed him to ignore ideas of patriotism and focus on the idea that, when the military is gone, the humanity of the soldiers is what remains.
Why The Covenant Succeeds Where Guy Ritchie’s Other Departures Failed
Ritchie Has Struggles With Embracing Other Genres In The Past
WhileGuy Ritchie’s The Covenantis a stunning example of the filmmaker’s versatility, it is not the first time Ritchie has stepped outside his established wheelhouse with a different kind of movie. In fact, Ritchie’s career is filled with quite a range of projects, showing his willingness to explore new kinds of stories. However, in many cases, after those riskier departures failed, Ritchie returned to his British crime roots to deliver a sure-fire success.
It was as if he was reintroducing himself as a director and that seemed to free him up considerably.
Following his breakout success withLock, Stock and Two Smoking BarrelsandSnatch, Ritchie first tried to move away from the crime genre with his madcap rom-com,Swept Away(2002), starring his then-wife Madonna. The result was a notorious box office bomb that was called one of the worst movies of all time by some critics. Similarly, movies likeKing Arthur: Legend of the Sword(2017),Aladdin(2019), andOperation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre(2023) were misguided attempts to do something different.
Part of the reason these movies didn’t work wasn’t that Ritchie was ill-equipped to try out a new genre, but rather that he was trying to make his old style fit into somewhere it didn’t belong.TheSherlock Holmesmoviesproved Ritchie’s blockbuster success, but those films were also surprisingly suited to his kind of storytelling.The Covenantworked because Ritchie had nothing to hang his hat on as a signature “Guy Ritchie movie”. It was as if he was reintroducing himself as a director, and that seemed to free him up considerably.
Guy Ritchie Was Drawn To The Covenant As Something New
The Filmmaker Also Found Similarities To His Other Stories
The fact thatGuy Ritchie’s The Covenantis a departure for the filmmaker is not something that is lost on Ritchie himself and was indeed something that motivated the movie in the first place, with Ritchie saying “I try to make it my business to do things that I’m unfamiliar with as much as I can.” (viaTime). However, not surprisingly,it was not the politics of tackling this particular war that was of interest to Ritchie, as he got to the more human aspect of the story:
What I liked about [The Covenant] is that you didn’t need to understand all the machinations of the political geography, you just needed to understand that one fella was profoundly motivated to service a debt that the other had bestowed upon him.
Interestingly, while a serious modern war movie might seem like a daunting undertaking for Ritchie, given the other movies he has made in the past, he was actually drawn to it as a story that was simpler than his complex and intricately plotted gangster stories:
I think war in general is so replete with emotional subjects, that it’s inevitable that it finds its way into a storyteller’s lexicon at some point. But it lends itself to my disposition, the subject, and it was such a simple story. And I quite like making a simple story.
Ritchie’s comments highlight how he was able to makeGuy Ritchie’s The Covenantsuch a successful change of pace. While there were a lot of new elements to deal with, he latched onto a central relationship between characters who had motivations that were not uncommon in his previous movies. Ritchie was able to use the familiarity of those elements to make a movie that felt completely different from his other work.
