For the past few years, Guy Ritchie and his filmmaking collaborators have alternated between lightweight larks and hefty tales of masculinity. There was the 2019 ensemble crime comedy “The Gentleman,” followed by the heavy-duty “Heat” riff “Wrath of Man,” which was chased by the globe-trotting spycraft romp “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.” Swinging back to a more serious register, Ritchie presents his first film grounded in harsh real-world politics, “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” and it’s the best film he’s made in years.
While not based on a true story, the film is inspired by the many true, tragic stories of Afghan interpreters who worked with the United States military for over 20 years, who were promised visas and then left to fend for themselves in a hostile country after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Ritchie and co-writers Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies have crafted a story about the U.S. military that fits into his auteurist point of view, about the deals made between men and the sacred responsibility to hold up one’s end of the bargain.
Ritchie plays with text-based information dumps in the film, scattering locations, names and definitions of military jargon throughout. But at the very end there’s a definition that illuminates the title and underlines the film’s thesis: the word “covenant,” defined as a bond, a pledge, a commitment.
