Guy Ritchie's The Covenant Trailer: Jake Gyllenhaal Stars In The Latest Guy Ritchie Movie

Correction: We received word from the production company that this movie's official title is actually "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant," and have reflected that in every instance in this article. Read on.

By now, it's safe to say you know pretty much what you're getting when you see the name "Guy Ritchie" attached to a trailer. Some gruff, fast-talking, and probably criminal characters are going to be stuck in impossibly tight circumstances that can only be solved by weapons and wit and a fair bit of off-color tastelessness. Oh, and there's a pretty good chance that you'll either love or hate it — nothing in-between. The gangster-loving director behind "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," "Snatch," "Sherlock Holmes," and most recently "The Gentlemen" and "Wrath of Man" has fully established his own recognizable niche and has mostly been content to stay right there (for all our sakes, we'll just ignore that little Disney remake of "Aladdin," thank you very much).

So when word first hit that Ritchie would be teaming up with star Jake Gyllenhaal for an action-thriller following a soldier soon after the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in the early 2000s, most expected another controversial shoot-'em-up in the same vein as many of the director's prior work. But, hey, you know what they say about when you assume, right?

Today brings us the first official trailer for "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant" (which was previously known under the title "The Interpreter"), complete with footage selling a surprisingly melodramatic tone that feels like a far cry from Ritchie's usual MO. Rest assured, there will very likely be plenty of tense action sequences and, ah, questionable politics involved that all Ritchie fans have come to expect, but it's always exciting to see an established filmmaker attempt to break free of the mold and do something different. Check it out below!

Yup, talk about a change of pace. There are none of the usual quippy, larger-than-life, and occasionally insufferable Guy Ritchie characters to be seen within a hundred miles of "The Covenant." Instead, it looks like we're set to receive a much more mature drama about a US soldier named John Kinley (Gyllenhaal), the Afghan interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim) who saves his life during an engagement, and the epic struggle that Kinley faces to return and rescue his own rescuer before time runs out.

Perhaps the fact that "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant" marks an instance where Ritchie isn't solely credited on the screenplay has something to do with that. Ritchie directs from a script co-written by Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson, and Marn Davies that was inspired by the director's discussions with real-life servicemen and women in the armed forces. Granted, Atkinson and Davies have collaborated with Ritchie before on films such as "Wrath of Man," "The Gentlemen," and the upcoming (and long-in-the-works) "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre," so perhaps this simply represents a natural turning point in Ritchie's filmography. We'll see just how different this film really is when "Guy Ritchie's The Covenant" comes to theaters on April 21, 2023.

Guy Ritchie's "The Covenant" follows US Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Afghan interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim). After an ambush, Ahmed goes to Herculean lengths to save Kinley's life. When Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given safe passage to America as promised, he must repay his debt by returning to the war zone to retrieve them before the Taliban hunts them down first.