Guy Ritchie's The Covenant

 

Director Guy Ritchie is an accomplished film maker with more than a dozen features on his filmography, but this is the first one to put his name in the title. The usual reason is given for why that has occurred, another film project has a claim to the title and the studio is trying to avoid confusion. That has happened before, e.g. "Lee Daniel's The Butler" and "Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio". I am going to suggest a better reason, this is Ritchie's best film and one that he should be most proud of. Like John Hancock signing the Declaration of Independence in a large flourish, Ritchie signifies a personal statement with his name in the title.

I made his film "The Gentlemen" my favorite of the Covid limited movie year 2020. I have enjoyed and admired most of the English gangster films he has produced. I consider him a reliable director when it comes to comedic action and silly violence. I can now say that his skills in regard to action are not limited to the light adventure styles we have been accustomed to. "The Covenant" is a serious war film with hard action sequences that are played realistically without the cinematic stylings that are so frequent in today's films. Just a few weeks ago, he released a film "Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre", that I thought was a bit of a let down from his previous output. My guess is, he was more focused on this project than the piece of action entertainment that came to us earlier this year. The reality of this picture makes the suspense work so much better than the artifice of those earlier pictures. 

"The Covenant" is a fictional story about a non-fictional war, and it is focused on characters we know to exist in reality in some form or another. Actor Jake Gyllenhaal plays Army Sgt. John Kinley, a soldier tasked with locating Taliban Weapons in Afghanistan. His unit is assigned a new interpreter, Ahmed, played by Iraqi born actor Dar Salim.  For the first act of the film, the men form a tentative professional relationship in which Ahmed repeatedly demonstrates his worth not only for his language skills but for his understanding of the culture and physical environment the conflict is located in. There are plenty of tense moments in this section, as the threats from the Taliban are everywhere, frequently buried in the everyday life of the people of Afghanistan, who seem to despair of both the U.S. presence and that of the radical Muslim movement. Ahmed sometimes takes the initiative, when he is really expected to defer to the Americans, but Sgt. Kinley recognizes, slowly, that his interpreter is a valuable part of their team. 

A frighteningly realistic combat sequence makes the transition between the first and second acts, and it is tough to imagine because it does not go well for the American unit, several of whom we have met and listened to in conversations that are fraternal in nature with one another.  Kinley and Ahmed find themselves fleeing from a vast force of Taliban fighters, while they are more than 70 miles from the base of operations. This act is where Gyllenhaal and Salim earn their acting stripes, as the two men fight their way through the mountainous terrain, trying to avoid capture that would surely lead to torture and death.  I have no military training myself, but I was convinced that the two actors were operating very much in the manner that real soldiers would. They are cautious when necessary and forceful when required to be. The overwhelming odds make it inevitable that something bad is going to trip them up at some point. When the inevitable happens, they still manage to forge on, and the heroic cleverness of Ahmed, plus his familiarity with the people and terrain, allow them to dance around capture on their journey. Salim takes the lead role for much of this portion of the film, and although he is a savior figure, his character never comes across as a condescending stereotype. 

It is the third act of the film that should shame the U.S. and it carries the real weight of the movie. The people of Afghanistan have suffered under the Taliban, but imagine what it must be like for those people who cooperated with U.S. forces. They live under a shroud of doom, and Ahmed is simply a symbol of the larger issue of U.S. obligation to it's partners in this enterprise. Bureaucracy, indifference, and logistics probably have accounted for hundreds of deaths since the U.S. left the arena. This story may be fictional, but the scenarios are real, and they are haunting. Ritchie's film strips off the veil and shows us how damaging our failures to these allies is. Without taking a political position, the film still makes a valid point about our moral shortcomings in this conflict. The third act concludes with a suspense filled  action sequence, which is thrilling, but the epilogue to the story should depress anyone with a sense of right and wrong. 

Personally, I was moved by the story and outraged by the reality. The film is suspenseful from beginning to end. The tension that I felt in my stomach during the whole story, never seemed to let up, and that sort of engagement is what I treasure in a film. So when you take the two lead performances, and put them together with the realistically staged action sequences, and then layer a dollop of moral outrage on top of it, I think you get one of the best films of the year. If I were not opposed to totalitarianism, I'd say it should be required viewing for everyone who cares about what this country does in the rest of the world. I don't know that there is a solution to the issues in Afghanistan that will satisfy all the relevant parties, but I do know that what we have done in getting out of that part of the world, did not work in a way that anyone should be proud of.  

Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre

 I received a DMCA takedown order for the You Tube Trailer of the film. This is the First Time in 13 Years of Posting on this site, that a content company has requested that a link to their trailer be removed. The Counter-Claim Process is convoluted, So I will simply tell you that to see a trailer for this film, you will have to go somewhere else.

Either of the big names attached to this film would probably have been enough to get me into the theater for this. When you put the two of them together, it was impossible for me to resist. Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham collaborated two years ago on an action film released when people were still hiding from the pandemic, "Wrath of Man". Also present in that film was Josh Harnett, twenty years ago "the next big thing" but still around doing yeoman service in a variety of projects. He is much better used in this movie than "Wrath", but that does not mean that this is a better movie. 

Director Ritchie has a distinctive style, that when he lets it fly, elevates the action films he makes to art. That is not the case with this movie, it is product. The non sequential story telling that marks his best films, is mostly missing here. There are a couple of flashbacks but they only offer exposition, they don't drive the story or create surprises at all. The colorful characters that make movies like "The Gentlemen", "lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" or "Snatch" so enjoyable, are missing. The lead character played by Statham is the usual badass, but other than his hard guy stare, there is nothing. A hint of some of his eccentricities is offered early on, and then none of them show up or get used to provide any entertainment. The villain, played by Hugh Grant, at least is a little interesting. Grant seems slightly miscast as a cold blooded killer, but completely right with the quirk that the script has given him. If only that were the main character, this could have been a lot more fun. 

The two members of Statham's crew are Aubrey Plaza and  Bugzy Malone, who are given tropes to play but not really characters. Harnett as a dim witted Hollywood action star is better. He gets to lampoon the stuff going on in the story with his character's plot line. There was fun to be had when he and Grant play off of one another, but otherwise the humor in this movie is very weak, which is strange because Ritchie's films are often hysterical. The secondary villain has no character development at all which makes things less interesting in the climax. 

There are plenty of action beats but they rarely have any suspense to them. In most spy/heist/adventure films, there is a complication which comes up and requires  some improvisation on the part of our protagonists. Those complications are never anything that can't be resolved by an action moment, and that is one of the reasons that the film feels so mechanical. We are just moving from one moment to the next, and all of the killing at the climax has very little suspense to i. This is not so much a John Wick one on one as it is a less polished series of deaths when Wick kills 60 enemies in three minutes. 

I did not dislike the film, but it is clear that it was not something the director felt passionately about. The actors are moved through their moments without much effort to make their characters more engaging. The action is standard for the most part, and there is not the usual humor (with maybe a couple of exceptions) that you get in a Guy Ritchie film. If you are not in a very demanding mood, you can enjoy this and then forget about it. 

Wrath of Man

 

Director Guy Ritchie has managed to entertain me  repeatedly with his blend of hard cases, colorful language, non-linear films. As a matter of fact, my favorite film of the previous year, during which we were locked out of theaters for far too long, was his movie "The Gentlemen". That film had a star studded cast and a convoluted plot that mixed hipster drug culture with high finance and then threw in a substantial dollop of violence. That is pretty much the Ritchie formula. "Wrath of Man" forgoes many of the tropes of a Ritchie film. As a consequence, it feels a little more generic and definitely not the film I expected.

That's not to say I was disappointed, this movie largely delivers an action packed, violence leaden crime drama. It eschews the wisecracking criminals, and the absurdist moments that make Ritchie's other films so unique. The one signature element that is utilized involves the non-sequential story structure. This plays out with a series of flashbacks, repeats from alternative perspectives, flask forwards and time shifting.  That structure however has become it's own cliché, and it is used not only in films but television programs and commercials, so that freshness, is not going to be a selling point for the movie. 

The main selling point is going to be Jason Statham. If you look up movie tough guys, Statham will show up with the Dwayne Johnson, Lee Marvin, Kurt Russel and a dozen other well known actors who made their bones kicking ass and taking names. He has made more than thirty of these hard action films in the last twenty years and has built a career out of being a badass even among other badasses. So what happens here? Statham gets quiet, skips most of the fisticuffs and shoots the hell out of anything that moves. There was a sequence here where machine guns are used in combat and it was one of the more intense combinations of sound and photography and direction that I have seen. No headbutts or neck snaps or flying kicks, just a lot of sharpshooting and massive spraying of bullets. These kinds of films are not hard to find, Gerard Butler, Sylvester Stallone, Nic Cage are all making two a year these days. There is nothing wrong with that, it's simply that there is nothing special.

To borrow a description from another movie, every magic trick has three acts,  The Pledge, The Turn, and the Prestige. Ritchie has been great about that last act in all of his English crime dramas. The pieces fall elegantly into place at the end and we are impressed by how well they all fit together and explain what happened. "Wrath of Man" fails to stick "the Prestige". There are unclear relationships and confusing explanations, which instead of being elegantly detailed at the end, have to be worked out after everything has happened. You will probably be able to make sense of it, but we want the magician to do the trick for us, we don't want to work it out after dinner two hours later. 

The actors are solid. Statham has that thousand yard stare down pat. Holt McCallany, who I knew from "Mindhunter" is an appealing presence as well.  Jeffrey Donovan shows up late in the movie, dominates all his scenes and should have been a bigger part of the plot. Scott Eastwood's character will make you angry, which it is supposed to do and you will wonder why Josh Hartnett doesn't have more to do. This movie will be satisfying for a moment but it is not rewatchable the way so many other Guy Ritchie films are.  There is nothing wrong with it except it is not what I was hoping for. 

The Gentlemen

If ever there was someone who clearly benefited from the rise of independent cinema through the wedge of Quentin Tarantino, it was Guy Ritchie.  His take on English gangsters propelled him into prominence and he has had some great opportunities ever since. Maybe all of his films have not been successes, but after shepherding the live action remake of Aladdin to a worldwide box office of over a billion dollars, his failures will be overlooked for a while. He returns to his natural milieu with "The Gentleman", a violent comical take on the economics of the marijuana business. It is filled with the sort of off kilter characters that "Snatch", "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Rocknrolla" also overflowed with. Even though Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham are missing, "The Gentlemen" will take it's rightful place alongside those rough cut gems.

The cast is chock full of Richie regulars but features some newcomers as well. Co-producer Matthew McConaughey is given star billing and while he earns it, there are several standout performances along the way. Charlie Hunnam, who starred in the Ritchie misfire "King Arthur" is a sturdy second banana to McConaughey's crime lord.  He is all quiet coiled professionalism, waiting to be provoked into action. Henry Golding who has made a name for himself as a romantic lead in "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Last Christmas" gets to play a heavy in this film and he is cynically effective as a self absorbed hoodlum on the make and maybe stretching past his reach too soon.  Eddie Marsan, a veteran of the two Guy Ritche Sherlock Holmes movies, plays a belligerent newspaper publisher. The resolution to his part of the story is one of the images we are fortunately spared from viewing.

It is two big names playing supporting parts that steal this movie and make it so enjoyable to watch. I could have sworn that Colin Farrell was a veteran of the crime films Ritchie made in his early days, but this seems to be their first film together. You know how Tarantino has filled the mouth of Samel L. Jackson with amazing dialogue in their collaborations? while this feels the same way. Farrel delivers the lines that Ritchie has written as if they have worked together for decades. He gets the intonations, relational status and emotional equivalency exactly right. Some things just go together perfectly. So to the list of milk and cookies, peanut butter and jelly, and James Bond and Martinis, add Colin Farrell to Guy Ritchie.

As great as Farrell is in his almost tangential role, there is another well established actor who basically steals the film in a wholly unexpected manner. Hugh Grant has been a light romantic comedian for most of his career. As he is aging out of the romantic lead casting, he has found his true niche as a character actor. In "Florence Foster Jenkins" he gave a sympathetic performance backing up Meryl Streep. In "Paddington 2" he delightfully plays the villain and deserved even more awards attention. Unfortunately, this fil gets a January release here in the States and by next December, people will have forgotten how great he is here. Grant plays a investigator/journalist/detective who tries to take what he finds out about the drug kingpin as a way of both blackmailing the gangster and breaking into the movie business. He is also the narrator of the film, who provides exposition, transitions and color to the events being described. Usually Grant has a proper sounding pronunciation and delicate manner of expression, but not his character Dexter. He is a foul mouthed, dirty minded, over confident and smug creature. Visually he is barely recognizable as the world famous actor he is, but vocally and with many mannerisms, you will not know that this is the same guy who wooed Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, Sandra Bullock and many more.

The dialogues, violence and complicated machinations of the plot are the things that you expect in a Guy Ritchie crime film. The elegant turns of phrase that McConaughey uses as he engages his potential business partners and his enemies is a great example of the screenwriter's strengths. Hunnam and Farrell with their mild deferential styles contrasted to what we see both are capable of are a plus with the dialogue and the action. Although it seems that the events in the story are spinning out as a series of unplanned obstacles, there is always a way that those moments tie back into the plot, usually in a surprising way.  At least it will be a surprise if you have never seen one of Ritchie's earlier gangster films. If you have, you know to expect the unexpected, but you will be able afterwards to say, Of course.