Movie Review: GUY RITCHIE'S THE COVENANT...

A few hours ago, I watched Guy Ritchie's The Covenant at AMC theaters.

Inspired by the U.S. military's full withdrawal from Afghanistan in August of 2021, the Guy Ritchie-directed war drama was a well-made flick that conveyed the bond which formed between American soldiers and their Afghan interpreters during a bloody conflict that spanned 20 years and four U.S. presidents.

The story of The Covenant was about Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal), and how he was determined to bring his interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim) and his family to America after Ahmed saved Kinley's life following an ambush by the Taliban during a mission to locate IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) around the Afghan countryside.

Even though Kinley wasn't very cordial to Ahmed when they first met at Bagram Air Base, this didn't stop Ahmed from pushing a wagon carrying the wounded sergeant across 50 kilometers (or was that 100 kilometers? I forgot) of hostile territory to the U.S.-controlled military installation. That alone made it an obligation for Kinley—upon return to his home in Santa Clarita, California after recovering from his combat injuries—to save his Afghan comrade's life as well.

Since the story between Kinley and Ahmed themselves wasn't based on actual people, The Covenant concluded in a predictable but upbeat manner in that (spoilers ahead) the sergeant and his interpreter were saved from their Taliban pursuers after U.S. military contractors—aided by an AH-64 Apache helicoper and the "Angel of Death" (a.k.a. an AC-130 Spectre gunship used by American Special Forces)—came to the rescue at the last minute.

Unlike in Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (which I enjoyed more than Ritchie's previous film, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), thousands of Afghan interpreters, in real life, were not so lucky in having American forces come to their aid and rescue them after the Taliban took complete control of Afghanistan in September of 2021.

To this day, interpreters around the Central Asian country are in hiding as they fear for their lives since the Taliban will not cease its hunt for all of the Afghan individuals who aided the so-called 'infidels' during a 20-year occupation of their nation. Guy Ritchie's The Covenant is obviously Hollywood's way of granting a happy ending for one of these interpreters who risked their lives to help America and its allies free the Afghan people from militant oppression that plagued Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001...and now 2021 to the unforeseeable future.

That is all.

PS: On a slightly lighter note, Dar Salim looks like he could portray Boba Fett in future Star Wars projects if Temuera Morrison ever left that role...as well as a badass Jack Bauer-type character if FOX TV ever decides to do another spinoff of the hit series, 24! Also, The Covenant was Guy Ritchie's way of letting a U.S. soldier played by Jake Gyllenhaal see combat—after Gyllenhaal portrayed a Marine who never fired his gun at the enemy during the 1991 Gulf War in 2005's Jarhead.