Why Guy Ritchie went to war for Jake Gyllenhaal-starring The Covenant
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Guy Ritchie's Covenant does not look like it was a fun movie to make. Set during the closing stages of America's military involvement in Afghanistan, the film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as U.S. Army Sergeant John Kinley and Danish actor Dar Salim as an Afghan interpreter named Ahmed who are stranded in hostile territory after Kinley's fellow soldiers are killed in an ambush. With Kinley himself injured, Salim's character must literally drag the sergeant through Taliban territory back to safety, placing Kinley in a moral debt to the interpreter.
While director Guy Ritchie is best known for gangster comedies like Snatch and The Gentlemen, the filmmaker is happy to admit The Covenant "isn't funny." It is easy to imagine that the production was similarly laugh-free as cast and crew shot scene after scene in a hot, dusty desert. "Au contraire. It was incredibly pleasant," corrects Ritchie.
"We had a lovely time. We were in Spain. I like Spanish food and I like Spanish wine," he continues. "No, we like Spain. Jake's a wonderful chap. Dar's a wonderful chap. We had a lovely time!"
Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Dar Salim and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'The Covenant'
Ritchie, who co-wrote the film's script with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, was inspired to make the movie after watching documentaries about the plight of local interpreters in Afghanistan and Iraq. In many cases, these individuals have been essentially abandoned by American and British authorities after the troops withdrew from the respective countries.
"What I was struck by was the warmth, the sense of brotherhood between the disparate cultures," says the director. "It felt like the correct thing to do would be to honor the tacit or explicit contract. I was taken by the fact that the American administration — for all sorts of reasons, some understandable, maybe some [which] weren't — were [unable] to facilitate their deal to look after their Afghan colleagues."
Ritchie describes the film's plot as "an amalgam of different stories from Afghanistan and Iraq, both English and American."
"There was a consistent theme of the bond that was fused between the military boots on the ground and the local assistance they received there, and how quickly that bond formed, and the complication of that bond being separated," he continues. "You could feel the pain in both parties not being able to facilitate the contract, tacit or otherwise, of being able to look after their colleagues."
The filmmaker was also attracted to the story and the genre by the same desire to test himself, which led the Brit to direct 2019's Will Smith-starring live-action remake of Aladdin.
"I've made it my business to try to be promiscuous with film," he says. "Having come along with caper-gangster films initially, I'm confident in that sphere, but you want to be challenged as a director. I've tried to cover as many genres of film as I can to keep me stimulated and to enjoy the whole process."
Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Jake Gyllenhaal and Guy Ritchie on the set of 'The Covenant'
Ritchie explains that finding his two lead actors was among the most difficult parts of making The Covenant.
"It was a painful process of trying to find the appropriate actors that, A, understand the work and, B, are up for that work," the director says, with a laugh. "That's just a painful process of cherry-picking those that understand the essence of the vision. I've been following Jakes's career for 20 years or so. I've been very keen to work with him and this seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to collaborate. Dar has an intelligent humanity about him, and he also radiates charisma, so there's a conspiracy of characteristics that move within Dar to make him the perfect guy for that role."
Ritchie seems happy with his casting choices, both for the performances they delivered in front of the camera and for their conviviality away from it.
"They were great fun," he says. "They came with a wonderful attitude and could very swiftly shift from having a conspicuously fun time to being consummate professionals. Some of my darkest moments in filmmaking, 30 seconds before, you're laughing hysterically. You're sure it's going to contaminate the essence of the performance that the actor then has to embody and express. A great actor goes from laughing like a drain to crying a river within 10 seconds. It's an impressive thing to behold when you see that."
Gyllenhaal tells EW that he did indeed have a good time making the movie. "It was physical in different ways, but he has a wonderful crew of people, a true group of professionals who know what they're doing," he says of his director. "We had a lot of fun in between takes and in between set-ups. He knows how to make a real community around him."
Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Jake Gyllenhaal and Guy Ritchie on the set of 'The Covenant'
The actors' willingness to roll with Ritchie's ideas was demonstrated when the director came up with a lengthy sequence not in the original script — Ahmed's rescue of Kinley.
"Funnily enough, that journey didn't gestate until I started filming," says Ritchie. "So what we'd do was tack onto the end of every day an extra couple of hours in order to accommodate the journey in all the different environments we were at. That journey was cobbled together over eight weeks of a couple of hours a day in every location we were in."
Ritchie is speaking to EW over Zoom from Turkey, where the prolific director is making his new movie and apparently enjoying that experience as well.
"We are shooting a film that's based on a book called The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare," says Ritchie of the project, which reunites the filmmaker with his The Man from U.N.C.L.E. star Henry Cavill. "[It's] about the first clandestine mission of World War II. We're having a lovely time! As it turns out, Turkish wine is not bad, not bad at all."
The cast of The Covenant also includes Antony Starr, Alexander Ludwig, Bobby Schofield, Emily Beecham, and Jonny Lee Miller. The film is released in theaters this weekend.
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