‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’ Review: The Director Gets Serious — and Ups His Game — in a Stirring Afghanistan War Drama Starring Jake Gyllenhaal
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Last month, to my great surprise, I raved about a Guy Ritchie movie, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre,” as an exhilarating exception to the rule of Ritchie’s style-over-substance, more-frosting-than-cake school of crime-thriller grandiloquence. The film bombed, and more critics than not disagreed with me. But I stand by my assessment of “Operation Fortune” as a diabolically entertaining screwball action-espionage caper. If you want to talk about exceptions to the rule, though, that movie has nothing on the new Guy Ritchie film, which is called (wait for it) “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.” Ritchie’s name was reportedly added to the title because there is already a film in existence called “The Covenant.” But that sounds like an awfully thin reason to suddenly convert Ritchie into a marquee legend, and, in fact, there’s a better reason. Against all odds, he has become one of the best directors working. “The Covenant” isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper. It’s an Afghanistan war drama, and if you’re wondering whether he has made a combat film in some version of the Ritchie style (jazzy violence, fast-break comic-strip dialogue, needle drops), the answer is no. He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. “The Covenant” unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.