Guy Ritchie's The Covenant

Guy Ritchie's The Covenant follows US Army Master Sergeant John Kinley during a final tour in Afghanistan, where local interpreter Ahmed accompanies his unit. When the group is ambushed, Kinley is badly wounded and nearly everyone else is killed. Ahmed carries him across hostile terrain to safety, risking his own life while enemy fighters pursue them. Back in the United States, Kinley discovers that Ahmed and his family were denied the passage to America they had been promised. Feeling he owes his life to the interpreter, Kinley returns to the war zone on his own to bring Ahmed and his relatives out.

The film is directed by Guy Ritchie, who wrote the screenplay with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson and also produced it. It is the thirteenth of the nineteen features he has directed, arriving between Wrath of Man and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Kinley, with Dar Salim as Ahmed, alongside Sean Sagar, Jason Wong, Rhys Yates and Christian Ochoa. The production, made in the United Kingdom and the United States by STX Films and Toff Guy Films, cost about 55 million dollars and returned roughly 22 million worldwide.

Audience reception has been positive: 7.5 out of 10 on IMDb from over 142,000 votes, and 7.7 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller base of about 3,300. The critics' rating stands at 6.8 out of 10 from 119 reviews, somewhat below the audience scores. At 123 minutes, the film is an action thriller centred on the bond between the two men.