Regie: Guy Ritchie (Layer Cake, King Arthur, Aladdin, Sherlock Holmes)
Met Jake Gyllenhaal, Dar Salim, Anthony Starr, Emily Beecham, Fahim Fazli, Alexander Ludwig,…
Playtime: 123′
Check it out if you loved Kandahar, 12 Strong, The Outpost & American Sniper.
The Story: We follow Sergeant John, on his last service in Afghanistan, working alongside local interpreter Ahmed, who risks his own life to carry a wounded soldier to safety across miles of rough & dangerous terrain.
Our verdict: MoviePulpers, the film year 2023 has brought us something clean again with Barbie & Oppenheimer, but the unmissable film classic of the year for us still goes to Operation Fortune by Guy Ritchie for the time being. Along with The Gentlemen, the Briton has once again amazed us in recent years as one of the sharpest directors of his generation. We were therefore very surprised to see a new Guy Ritchie movie with the title The Covenant in very short succession.
The surprise was that this film adaptation did not get a Belgian release date. Belga Film & The Searchers let him pass, while KFD bet on Kandahar. Rightly so, because Covenant is not Ritchie’s best work. Expertly we can at least call Covenant with great camera shots, hard action & the as always strong character head Jake Gyllenhaal. But the long playing time that mainly suffers from a weekday editing ultimately kills Covenant a bit for us. We understand that the story of Covenant takes its time, but the 4 chapters don’t flow together well due to the inconsistent way of filming. Covenant also puts Dar Sahim’s career on the map, but still doesn’t manage to surpass other content about the Afghan war such as The Old Man & Kandahar. That being said, as Belgians we can’t complain, because Covenant still blows many Netflix action films such as Extraction 2 & Hidden Strike to the moon. As a streamer, you are therefore spoiled for choice on alternative streaming services such as Prime Video & Apple TV Plus!
In short, it can’t always be legendary for Guy Ritchie, but The Covenant still kicks ass along with Kandahar this film year.
