Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the war drama Guy Ritchie's The Covenant. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video from this Friday.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the war drama Guy Ritchie's The Covenant. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video from this Friday.
When you hear the words “A Guy Ritchie film” your mind jumps straight to the world of shady geezers, violent shootouts and knock-out dialogue. His new film couldn’t be further from that expectation.
Set in Afghanistan Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is a serious war drama that sees Ritchie reiningin all his usual editing flash and muzzling his trademarked rapid-fire scripting. The result is a gripping and tense movie with a strong political and social point. It’s already being hailed as Ritchie’s best film in years.
Star Jake Gyllenhaal describes the movie as “an action parable” and that’s a fine summation.
He stars as Sergeant John Kinley, a US Special Operations officer whose squad is tasked with taking out Taliban bomb factories. To aid in this, he’s assigned a local interpreter named Ahmed, played by Dar Salim. It’s an uneasy pairing, occupier and local, and their relationship is strained.
During a mission to eliminate a factory, the squad is ambushed. Kinley is seriously injured but dragged to safety by Ahmed. The rest of the squad, however, isn’t so lucky. The movie follows the pair’s long and difficult journey through the harsh Afghanistan environment back to safety and then Kinley’s political fight to repay his moral life-debt to Ahmed.
“It’s a movie about behaviour,” Gyllenhaal explains. “It’s not based on a true story but based on many, many different true stories about the idea of doing good despite oneself. These two people share so much more humanity than they expected or would even like to. That to me is what was so moving about the story.”
Dar Salim and Jake Gyllenhaal in the war drama Guy Ritchie's The Covenant.
Gyllenhaal has known Ritchie for about 15 years and has always wanted to work with the writer/director, but until now there wasn’t a suitable project. When he was finally sent a script, it wasn’t quite what he’d expected. It was roughly half the size of the industry standard and gave the impression that Ritchie was feeling out what sort of film he wanted to make.
“It was a part-treatment part. There’d be scenes with dialogue and then the next scene would say, Ahmed and John have an argument,” Gyllenhaal says, laughing. “You could feel the structure of the story and understand the tale that was wanting to be told. But it took a conversation with Guy to understand what it was and why he wanted to make the movie. I remember feeling, ‘This is a story that needs to be told’.”
It was the lack of cheesy sentimentality in the story that resonated with Gyllenhaal. The movie strives to present both the war and its characters in as realistic a way as possible.
“It was a process, making the movie wasn’t just the script,” he says. “We rewrote scenes every morning, working through ideas every day, discovering things halfway through and then going back to the beginning. This movie was different because it wasn’t actually about the script. It was about Guy wanting to do something different in his repertoire, which really excited me.”
On the surface, the movie may be about Kinley and his obligation to help the man who saved him, but on a thematic level, the movie is about the Afghanistan refugee crises brought about by the withdrawal of American troops in 2020.
“We live by this ethos of no one left behind but, since 2001, 300 Afghan interpreters have been killed by the Taliban. And there are thousands more awaiting American visas. It’s a deeply complex situation. This story sheds a light on that. I hope people can connect to it emotionally in a different way than from what you see in the news cycle.”
Jake Gyllenhaal under fire in the war drama Guy Ritchie's The Covenant. Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
For Gyllenhaal, there was also an incredibly personal reason for wanting to bring attention to this subject.
“One of my closest friends owes his life to his interpreter,” he says somberly. “He was a Marine. He’s said to me, he owes his life to him. This story is very close to me. I’ve never really cried in a movie I’ve been in but I do at the end of this one because it reminds us who we are as humans. That we are good and that our intentions are good. Even if we do it begrudgingly. Even if we’re totally reluctant. Even if we don’t want to have to do it. The fact is you do have it in you, to want to. That’s very, very moving to me. And that changed me.”
Although Ahmed is not keen to risk his own life to save Kinley’s he still does. Much as Kinley risks his own future and security to help Ahmed when America does not follow through with the promised visa - even knowing the Taliban is actively hunting and murdering those who aided America. While this is obviously huge, Gyllenhaal hopes the tale will inspire everyone to be kinder - even if they’d prefer not to.
“I don’t think you have to drag a comrade over hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain to pay a debt or to fulfil a promise,” he says laughing. “I think there are small things all the time. It can be done with an eye roll but you still do it, you know?”
“It’s about the action of it,” he smiles. “Even if it’s a small one.”
* Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from Friday.
