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    Movie Review

    Guy Ritchie goes to war with Jake Gyllenhaal in compelling The Covenant

    Alex Bentley
    Apr 19, 2023 | 3:24 pm

    If you take a good look at writer/director Guy Ritchie’s filmography, you might find yourself confused. He came to fame thanks to down-and-dirty movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, but over the years he’s also helmed movies as disparate as Swept Away, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the live-action remake of Aladdin.

    He seemed to have settled back into the “garbage crime” part of his personality in recent years, including Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, released just last month. He’s back with the wholly unexpected (if weirdly-named) Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. A far cry from his crime films, it centers on Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal), who leads an Army squad stationed in Afghanistan in 2018 that’s tasked with finding caches of weapons and explosives hidden by the Taliban.

    A vital part of that job is having a good interpreter who knows how to talk to locals, and Kinley finds that person in Ahmed (Dar Salim), who’s more than willing to take the job in exchange for the promise of U.S. visas for him and his family once the fighting is done. The bond between the two gets forged through extreme situations and the great instincts of both men in their jobs, and one particularly harrowing experience cements the idea that either will risk their life for the other.

    Although there are plenty of intense action sequences in the film, viewers might be surprised at how earnest it is. Written by Ritchie and his favorite co-writers of late, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, The Covenant has a similar feel to other modern war movies, but it manages to avoid redundancy and carves its own path.

    A big part of this has to do with the relatively unique focus on the military-interpreter relationship, one that’s been seen before but not often in such an intimate way. Ritchie and his co-writers make sure to make Ahmed a fully-realized character whose personal life, desires, and fears are just as important as that of Kinley or anyone else in the film.

    Scenes where Ahmed proves his worth not only establish a trust between him and Kinley, but make the audience want to root for him. The film is a work of fiction, but the filmmakers do their level best not to over-dramatize any of the sequences, lending a verisimilitude to the story for which Ritchie does not often strive.

    The film does get a little messy in its second act, with Ritchie allowing Gyllenhaal to indulge in a bit of overacting, and the editing fails to connect the dots in one key scene. But they right the ship without too much damage, setting up a compelling finale.

    Gyllenhaal seems to thrive in heavily dramatic roles like this, and even though it’s been years since his previous military part in Jarhead, it still fits him like a glove. Salim is a revelation, showing empathy and resolve in equal measures, giving everything the part needed to succeed. They have far and away the most screen time, but Alexander Ludwig and Jonny Lee Miller get some good scenes in supporting roles.

    It’s unclear where this side of Guy Ritchie has been hiding all these years, but the juxtaposition of his regular fare to the well-done drama in The Covenant makes you wonder what else he might be able to do. At 54 years old, Ritchie is showing he’s capable of being an adult, and moviegoers are the better for it.

    ---

    Guy Ritchie's The Covenant opens in theaters on April 21.

    Dar Salim and Jake Gyllenhaal in Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
      

    Photo by Christopher Raphael / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

    Dar Salim and Jake Gyllenhaal in Guy Ritchie's The Covenant.

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    Movie Review

    Lazy 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' remake hooks nothing but nostalgia

    Alex Bentley
    Jul 17, 2025 | 1:45 pm
    Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders in I Know What You Did Last Summer
    Photo by Brook Rushton
    Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

    When the original I Know What You Did Last Summer came out in 1997, it was riding the coattails of Scream, which came out in 1996. Like that film, it featured hot young actors of the time, albeit with a story that was much more standard than the inventive Scream. Still, it made enough of an impact for some studio executive to think it was worth reviving nearly 30 years later with its own legacy-quel.

    In the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, a group of five high school friends - Danica (Madelyn Cline), Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) - have reunited at the engagement party for Danica and Teddy on the 4th of July. While on an impromptu trip to watch fireworks on a twisty road in the nearby hills, Teddy goofs off in the middle of the road, causing a truck to swerve and drive off the cliff.

    A year later, having sworn to each other to not speak of the accident to anybody, they start getting stalked by a mysterious person in a fisherman’s slicker carrying a hook. With Teddy’s rich father, Grant (Billy Campbell), actively trying to cover up what his son did (as well as the fallout), it’s up to the group to figure out who is coming after them and how to stop that person.

    Written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and co-written by Sam Lansky, the film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel; in fact, it barely builds something that can roll. It might just be the laziest and most incompetent attempt to capitalize on an existing piece of intellectual property. There is almost zero effort put into establishing a connection between the members of the friend group, making them feel like strangers for the entire film.

    It doesn’t help that the young male actors in the film - which grows to include Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), a new fiance for Danica - serve no purpose other than to be generically good-looking. The most impactful of the men in the film is the returning Freddie Prinze, Jr., who - along with Jennifer Love Hewitt - has his old character from the first two films shoehorned into the new story. The filmmakers undercut any good feelings from their return by giving them hardly anything to do and then having Hewitt deliver the line, “Nostalgia is overrated.”

    The film as a whole never has a sense of momentum. The inciting incident is so tame - they even attempt to save the driver before the truck goes off the cliff - that the guilt they feel and the anger of the person going after them doesn’t feel warranted. Once the attacks start, it is shocking at how low-energy the sequences are, providing no sense of suspense or thrills. The filmmakers resort to the lamest of horror movie tropes, turning the film into a paint-by-numbers affair.

    Cline (one of the stars of Netflix’s Outer Banks) and Wonders (The Studio on Apple TV+, Bodies Bodies Bodies) are the clear stars of the film, but their characters are made into inert scream queens, negating any acting talent they possess. Hauer-King, Withers, and Pidgeon don’t bring anything interesting to their characters, existing merely to have someone else for the killer to go after.

    Even the worst films can have some kind of redeeming value if you look hard enough, but the only thing I Know What You Did Last Summer has to offer is that it becomes so comically bad by the end that you can’t help but laugh at its ineptitude. Both fans of the original and fans of horror movies in general will feel cheated by the experience.

    ---

    I Know What You Did Last Summer opens in theaters on July 18.

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