Published Oct 10, 2026, 7:45 PM EDT
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Guy Ritchie has made a career out of gangsters, thieves and men with extremely questionable business plans, but one of his best-reviewed movies leaves most of that behind. There are no elaborate heists or fast-talking London criminals here, just Jake Gyllenhaal stuck in Afghanistan in a much more serious war thriller. It’s a big change for Ritchie, but one critics were seriously impressed by, even if audiences didn’t give it the chance it so richly deserved.
That movie is*** Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant***, and the 2023 thriller has officially found a new streaming home on Prime Video. It gives one of Ritchie’s more overlooked movies another shot at finding the audience it missed in theaters, and you don’t have to spend $15 on a ticket this time.
The Covenant follows Sgt. John Kinley (Gyllenhaal), who is on his last tour of duty in Afghanistan when he is teamed with local interpreter Ahmed to survey the region. When their unit is ambushed on patrol, the unlikely duo are the only survivors. With enemy combatants in pursuit, Ahmed risks his own life to carry an injured Kinley across miles of grueling terrain to safety. When they’re back on U.S. soil, Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given passage to America as promised. Determined to protect his friend and repay his debt, Kinley returns to the war zone to retrieve Ahmed and his family before the local militias reach them first.
Gyllenhaal stars alongside Dar Salim (Game of Thrones) as Ahmed, Antony Starr (The Boys) as Eddie Parker, Alexander Ludwig (Vikings) as Declan O’Brady, Emily Beecham (1899) as Caroline Kinley, **Jason Wong **(The Gentlemen) as Joshua Jung, and Bobby Schofield (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) as Steve Kersher.
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
The Covenant was well received by reviewers, and it holds an 83% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences liked it even more. The performances of Gyllenhaal and Salim were acclaimed, and Ritchie’s more withdrawn and subtle filmmaking was admired by many who had become so used to the director’s flair for the bombastic and the wild. Sadly, the box office wasn’t nearly as impressive. The Covenant made around $22 million worldwide against a reported production budget of roughly $55 million, making it one of those movies that earned better reviews than ticket sales.
Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant is streaming now on Prime Video.
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Marn Davies, Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson
John Friedberg, Samantha Waite, Olga Filipuk, Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson, Josh Berger
Master Sergeant John Kinley
Directed by Guy Ritchie, the film revolves around a seasoned mercenary played by Jake Gyllenhaal who, after being betrayed during a high-stakes operation, forms an unlikely alliance with an Afghan interpreter. Together, they navigate treacherous territories in a quest for redemption and justice against those who wronged them.