Continuing the discussion from Movies (and occasionally face slaps) (Part 2) :
Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
Stunning. Absolutely stunning.
(especially once I got past feeling like Jake Gyllenhaal was secretly in a sequel to Jarhead)
After all of the increasingly terrible movies that positioned Guy Ritchie as Britain’s answer to Michael Bay, Ritchie has emerged as a mature filmmaker. The Covenant is as relentlessly paced as it is relentlessly restrained.
We already knew Guy Ritchie could make a fast-paced fun film, like Bay’s Ambulance to Ritchie’s Lock Stock or Snitch, but it doesn’t take long to see how self indulgent and emotionally youthful their movies feel. Michael Bay, for example, says to STFU, he makes movies for teenage boys. Guy Ritchie does the same thing, just for teenage boys from London.
Something has shifted with Ritchie for this one. Let us forgive him for his prior cinema sins.
There’s a small transition in the middle that reminded me a lot of the middle of Terminator 2, when the group at first escapes the T-1k into the desert and the audience understands the story isnt going to follow an obvious roadmap.
I would skip the trailer. It really ruins some of the best story beats.
Boring. Absolutely boring.
I was eager for a second viewing, but after a promising start, the movie lost my interest and it was difficult to keep watching. I guess that “T2 moment” I described in my first review was no longer good enough for me.