Avis des critiques

For much of its running time, [The Covenant] manages to be topical, suspenseful, and moving. But partly because the story is fiction, Ritchie takes a few genre liberties that threaten to undermine the sincerity of his tale.

[The Covenant] plays more like the director’s attempt at aping the style of Peter Berg, a slab of right-wing militaristic propaganda that manages the miracle of making Lone Survivor look subtle in comparison... [While the script is] nearly impossible to forgive in both its mind-numbing predictability and — to be quite frank — outright stupidity.

If “The Covenant” were only an interrogation of the hollowness of American exceptionalism, as its first hour suggests, it’d be among the most honest portrayals of the country’s role in the region. But Ritchie eventually awakens from his stupor, pushing this combat-action flick to gonzo territory.

For a writer/director known for babbling spy thrillers, The Covenant works best when the two leads are forced to be silent... Time and time again, Ritchie proves to be an effective action director. When it comes to writing the picture, less so, and The Covenant stands as another reminder of that sturdy dichotomy.

Even in his crime capers, Ritchie’s always had a light touch that’s sometimes veered off into the too-goofy, silly, or slight. But this grave turn, which isn’t grim, self-serious, or even humorless, is a welcome shift. That Ritchie can craft a hard, gripping action thriller isn’t much of a surprise, but the principled, poignantly honorable aspect of [The Covenant] and how well it’s conceived is a welcome surprise.

For all its clichés, this furious and discomfiting film tugs on your conscience for days, making a powerful case to turn the American public’s attention back to a conflict it would rather forget.

Compared with most of Ritchie oeuvre, [Guy Ritchie's The Covenant] is quiet, introspective, contemplative... It is [also] manipulative--skillfully, entertainingly and at times almost overbearingly so. But oh, boy, does it work.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant offers marginal entertainment value. It’s a film that seems afraid to offer any ideas about its setting and characters beyond the minimum. Only Salim, in a performance of quiet strength, gives the audience something to latch onto.

“The Covenant” isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper... If you’re wondering whether he has made a combat film in some version of the Ritchie style, the answer is no. He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. “The Covenant” unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.

[The Covenant] might be the most atypical Guy Ritchie film to date... For the most part, the project shows a new maturity, avoiding the glib facetiousness and tricksy plotting that have so often been part of the Ritchie stamp.

[The Covenant] remains firmly within Ritchie’s stylistic wheelhouse — his command of the swiftly moving camera, and its focus on violent masculine subjects, are intact — while proving to be intense and effective as a straightforward war drama. It might even lead one to ask why hasn’t been making “serious” cinema this whole time.

In its best moments, The Covenant plays like an anti-war genre picture from the late ’70s and early ’80s. Political in spurts, intense throughout, and incredibly well-performed, Ritchie’s film moves faster than most modern studio fare... Third-act qualms aside, Gyllenhaal and Ritchie emerge as a well-meshed Hollywood duo here.