#177. 'Guy Ritchie's The Covenant'
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All three hosts rave about Guy Ritchie's The Covenant, the "most earnest, least irony-drenched" film of Ritchie's career, in which Jake Gyllenhaal's Special Forces sergeant returns to Afghanistan to rescue the interpreter who saved his life; Sonny calls it his favorite of Ritchie's recent run (ahead of Wrath of Man, which he still considers Ritchie's actual masterpiece), likening it to Rambo: First Blood Part II as wish-fulfillment against the real, grimmer fate of abandoned Afghan allies, while JVL flatly calls it "one of the best war movies I've ever seen," praising its Ridley Scott-style geographic clarity, a spare screenwriting device (the "hook" in Gyllenhaal's chest) that avoids sentimentality, and its understated explanation of why the U.S. lost the war; Mike, who saw it cold, likens its structure to a short story and notes a theater audience visibly worn down by wave after wave of Taliban attackers, and all three single out Christopher Benstead's score. The first third is the usual grab-bag of banter: a proposed North Carolina bill banning youth-sports participation trophies leads Sonny to reveal his taekwondo black belt (earned around age 12 or 13, "registered weapon in 17 different states"), followed by an update on his dog's mysterious diarrhea (possibly COVID, possibly giardia), a plug for a live WarGames screening at the Crystal City Alamo Drafthouse, a wide-ranging box-office rundown (Super Mario Bros. still dominant, Ritchie's spotty track record including the King Arthur: Legend of the Sword bomb, and skeptical chatter about Barbie vs. Oppenheimer tracking numbers and the merits of Girls), and Mike's now-running mulch-delivery saga. The episode closes with a tease that the bonus episode goes deep on Jake Gyllenhaal's physique.
From the show notes
Participation trophies and war movies.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I still don't remember a thing I don't remember any of it I only remember the interpreter why he wants his job I need the money don't disappoint turn out to be a pain in the ass no not me sir money isn't the reason he wants this job it's Alabama killed his son stop the vehicle
JVL00:00:28we don't want to go down this road you're out of your bounds Ahmed you're here to translate actually I'm here to interpret
Mike00:00:34welcome to the Sub-Beacon podcast I'm your co-host Mike Warren joining me of course are my two co-hosts Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch you can find us at subbeacon.com where you can listen subscribe comment tell us what you think of the show in this week's episode we will be discussing Guy Ritchie's The Covenant Guy Ritchie's The Covenant but first let's hear how everyone's doing Jonathan what's going on man
JVL00:01:11so uh I was just telling Sonny before we went on the air I'm a little bit nervous about the show because I think it's gonna border on politics for a little bit and so I'm just gonna lean into that and I would like to talk with you guys about a bill currently making its way through the North Carolina legislature uh in which three republicans are attempting to ban participation trophies in all sports now how the enforcement of this would work is unclear it's unclear if they have to deputize a posse showing up at every single little league game or peewee soccer game in the state to make sure that nobody handed out a participation trophy or what they would do if somebody did but I was curious as to what since all three of us now are involved in youth sports do you see a lot of like molly coddling and participation trophy stuff because on my own we're all hostage to our own experiences I do not and what I've seen is the opposite problem which is that everybody has to start doing super serious club and travel teams by age seven otherwise they have no chance of even making their middle school team
Mike00:02:25thoughts yeah I mean I feel like I was the participation trophy generation as a as a mid generation Millennial I feel like I had a whole like a part of my room that was just like stuffed with participation trophies and it's amazing I never got a single trophy but like for anything but of course they didn't mean anything because I like everybody got one what was meaning do they mean something to like seven-year-old you know like were you proud of them no here's what meant something here's what meant something to me was what the coach said at the party at Pizza Hut as he handed you the truth you know for me it was you know because I was not a very good athlete shocker to anybody who knows me it was always most improved you know that was always the the the the sort of appellation I I got but you know a good coach would say something you know like what Michael did here well it was Michael W because I was on a baseball team one year that had six Michaels on it say five different actually actually I was Michael Bob because because all of us were Michael and so we all went by our middle names and so my middle name is Robert so I was Michael Bob and there was Michael Patti there was Michael George so but that's awesome yeah so it was that sort of you know you know this year the other season he came in and really every day at practice really put in his all all that sort of thing that was what I sort of felt made me feel good not the trophy the trophy was like okay but I will say that my kids don't get trophies they might get like a metal like a little a little metal on a string for some of the sports they play but the trophy thing is not at least in our little league and our little soccer league as well has not been a thing and I they don't miss it
JVL00:04:33they don't they don't care well they don't know that they're missing it right Sonny how is it with you when you were coaching just a few short months ago did you did you give out trophies to your young players your young athletes well
Sonny00:04:47this is a this is a complicated question it's a complicated question because in theory that's what should have happened in theory the the YMCA gives gives that gives us a box of trophies and we we distribute it at the last game of the year but the the problem with our league was hold on hold on let me guess you took
JVL00:05:13the kids together after the final game with the box of trophies he said I'm supposed to give these trophies to you but none of you earned it and then you dumped the box into a trash can and you know you threw on the floor and then you started berating me we got up in their faces with spittle in the fingers and you you Madison you didn't try at all you're a terrible soccer player you Genevieve you make me sick Brandon Brandon why weren't you on the bag get
Sonny00:05:41on the damn bag Brandon well it was soccer not baseball but yeah same same basic idea no so we we we were supposed to get the trophies at the last game you get them at the last game and you hand them out right except our last game was rained out two weeks in a row so they didn't have a last game oh so then it is then there's a question of how to get so in theory what could have happened was I would have I would have gone to the YMCA I would have gotten the trophies and then we would have all gotten together for you know yeah at CC's pizza or whatever and we would have had a little pizza party and it would have been great so I emailed all the parents I said hey I'm gonna I'm gonna go get the trophies where do we want to do you know a little little get together at the end of the year zero of them emailed me back zero of the parents emailed me back so we just didn't give out trophies nobody got any trophies there were no trophies no medals nothing of that nature uh what did it mean that
JVL00:06:41the bunch child got all of the trophies he got he got no trophies either because i just didn't go
Sonny00:06:45pick them up i literally just never went to pick them up because because i didn't hear from any of the parents so i was like oh fuck it if they if they don't care i don't i don't i really i literally don't care i don't i don't care at all i'm not gonna like have a i'm not gonna struggle to get these things distributed to the to the kids if the parents don't care and i never again i never i heard back from zero of them i got zero emails back so it's just like ah fuck it uh we're we're we're done with soccer's over soccer's over i hope you had a good season kids uh we're we're all done um so i so in theory they would have gotten the participation trophies but because nobody cared enough to get the participation trophies there were no participation participation trophies uh given out so that that is like that is that is how i frankly that's how i preferred i didn't really want to have to do it's the end of season miracle anyway uh it all worked out for me it was
JVL00:07:39less stuff i had you didn't want to have to think of something that they each did right and tell
Mike00:07:43them you know you were most improved but see but see i i actually i thought that was a nice thing and maybe because i sucked is i thought it was a nice thing but it was a nice thing and i thought growing up but you know you you get a relationship with these kids over the course of a season you do see them grow or you sort of have a have a problem kid you know who never listens and then by the end of the season maybe they're you know they're they do something that surprises you and um it's all
Sonny00:08:11bad news bears they're all shitty the whole time and nobody learns any lessons okay that's that's that's how it really is in the real world okay well then in the real world not near pollyanna 1990s hazy memory of childhood yeah warren but in the real world well can i just say it's all bad
Mike00:08:30and it stays bad forever can i just say the whole participation trophy complaint first of all i've only heard boomers complain about it and yet i think who bought the participation trophies for us who was the one who who were the people it it wasn't it wasn't seven-year-old me going can i please i didn't know what a trophy was i didn't know what trophy a participation trophy was so like you know physicians heal thyselves that's all i have to say
Sonny00:09:02i definitely i definitely had participation trophies because you just got them at uh at uh you know at the end of the season or whatever um but like i didn't care about them the trophies i cared i had i had like actual trophies that i won at various taekwondo tournaments in in sparring what and form presentation yeah i was i was like i was like i was like a black belt in taekwondo growing up i i was uh the american taekwondo stop stop everything i am
JVL00:09:30learning new new layers of the bunch onion i'm a i'm a i'm a my my hands are registered
Sonny00:09:37i'm a i'm a registered weapon in 17 different states because of my first degree black belt
JVL00:09:44from the american taekwondo association i have to ask is the first degree black so what age were you when you achieve i mean i was like uh uh
Sonny00:09:52oh god how was i how old was i i must have been uh let's see i i got the black belt after we had moved to virginia so i must have been 13 12 or 13 something like that so is the black belt that one
JVL00:10:06gets as a 12 or 13 year old the same mastery equivalent to a black belt that one would get
Sonny00:10:12as a 30 year old well it's like kramer black belt is black it's like kramer and seinfeld you're all the same level yellow belts right if you're if you're a 45 year old yellow belt or a eight year old yellow belt it's the same it's the same so my my 13 year old black belt would it was you no it's very funny i mean look we we you you had you had folks in the class who like there was there was an age range and there were there were like older like more accomplished athletes more like actual athletes who were also like getting their black belt at the same time and sometimes we would like it almost for fun it would be like all right sonny you go up against the you know 22 and that was that was always that was always fun um but uh but no spar yeah well yeah but it was always like i mean it's it's a very controlled it's a very control it's not like cobra kai you know it's not like there's there's not a lot of leg sweeping um or or that sort of thing but the uh but at the tournament i mean at the tournaments you would you you you were broken down by belt but also age range it was like you know it was like brown belt from age 10 to 12 or some some you know the the range was was
Mike00:11:22fairly narrow because the size thing does make a difference oh it makes a huge difference makes
JVL00:11:26it makes a huge difference but i mean why did you give it all up did you just you achieved everything you you wanted to achieve in the sport yeah i got my black belt and then i was like um
Sonny00:11:35i'm you know i can defend myself against uh you know the marauding bullies uh nobody's nobody's raping me in an alley i'll tell you that right now i don't even need a whistle i gotta i gotta i got my i got my uh front kicks and my i went but no i mean i was like i i could probably still break a board i bet i could break a board it's not hard it's not it's you just good form you just snap that wrist snap that wrist like the three
JVL00:12:02ninjas this is amazing i know how did i never know this about you i don't talk about it a lot because
Sonny00:12:08i don't want people to know i want people to think they've got the drop on me i want them to be like oh look at this look at this fat beard oh you're afraid that people are gonna and his glasses we're
JVL00:12:16gonna see it as a challenge they're gonna say oh i gotta go take a shot well i i i don't i don't
Sonny00:12:22want to be i don't want to be in a situation where everyone thinks i'm the toughest guy in the prison yard and they gotta they gotta take me down because again if i start killing people all over the place it's like con air i'm gonna be in jail with virus cyrus the virus and it's gonna be a it's gonna be
Mike00:12:38a real problem for me i don't want to go to jail it's about protecting everyone else jvl it's it's
JVL00:12:43about yeah you got you know it's a samurai about the ronin the newspaper publisher's bodyguard and he pulls up and he's like yeah you're coming with us and he's like i know karate he just backs
Mike00:12:57away he's like i'm sorry boss this is gonna this is gonna be sound extremely ignorant what distinguishes from the uh in the specific moves or style taekwondo from karate you're gonna ask
Sonny00:13:11a question here i don't know the answer to i don't i so i my my um my basic understanding is that uh these are all like various nationalities so taekwondo is mostly korean i think right right uh taekwondo is mostly korean the the like the the the american taekwondo association was founded by this south korean guy and like there's a south korean flag anyway uh but uh and the karate is you know is i guess japanese yeah right chinese but like
Mike00:13:43but but would i be able to it's what would i be like there's no difference well they're but like
Sonny00:13:47i think i will so like there are different fighting style i mean like in think of a kill bill right they're different fighting styles but i like i couldn't i couldn't possibly sit here and break them down for you i couldn't if you if you had like two martial artists fighting in a in a room i could be like oh that guy's doing jiu-jitsu everybody else is doing taekwondo or karate or something i don't know like jiu-jitsu was the only one i would actually recognize as an actual distinct art form because it's a lot of grappling you know more so than than taekwondo or karate
Mike00:14:16which is a lot of just striking and right jiu-jitsu is you use your opponent's moves
Sonny00:14:22against them yeah and again it's like a lot of you're getting in close and like right grabbing you know it's not anyway i i'm not i am by no mean i like i we're you know we're talking like 26 seven years ago now so it's been a it's been a minute since i've uh since i've uh practiced martial arts on a on a semi-professional you know touring the nation doing winning many tournaments amassing rooms of trophies not not participation trophies for sonny bunch those are no participation well every once in a while i would go to i would go to a tournament and i would not place in either form or uh or uh sparring and i would i would go home and i would put myself in the the kill bill coffin and punch my way out say would you would
JVL00:15:12you go out uh you know in the bad part of town then like mr nobody just looking for troubles you could beat on people exactly got your frustrations exactly i mean i'm sorry i didn't mean to hijack our show with this question but it's taking us in interesting directions mike isn't this exciting i'm i'm excited i'm at the edge of my seat but i feel
Mike00:15:31like i'm going to be let down because i'm going to ask sonny how his weekend was and if it's if it's not him doing taekwondo which i know it's not then it's just going to be a letdown
Sonny00:15:40no my dog my dog's shitting everywhere that's oh that's no uh this is so this is a problem we've already fixed but the uh i may have mentioned i may have mentioned that like dogs can get covid did i you guys this no when i was talking about getting covid apparently dogs can get covid um and i don't know if my dog got covid but uh when when i had covid the dog was not isolated from me as apparently you were supposed to isolate the canine in your in your life and uh for like a week after um after i had covid the dog was getting up in the middle of the night and just like kind of pooping everywhere just just pooping all over the place over the floor so that was that was annoying we ended up we took her to the vet and the vet was like eh it's probably not covid it's more likely to be giardia or something like that apparently giardia is going around right now if you don't do you know what giardia is giardia is a little microbe that gets in your it's it kills people it's a bad it's a bad thing um but dogs uh dogs are a little bit more resilient i think because they just eat stuff off the ground all the time and if they died anytime they ate a disease-ridden fungus or whatever they would they would not be long for this world so anyway uh but that was that was either my dog either had covid which gave her uh the runs or uh possibly giardia uh or something else anyway she is taking a series of medicines and uh and is now feeling much better but just want more proof in the and JBL's anti-dog yeah that's disgusting all i hear is the world uh this is why you shouldn't own a dog i like having a dog but it has been a it's been a rough it's been a real pain in the butt the last like six months or so to speak so anyway that's what's going on that's that's all that's all that's going on with me just dog dog pooping everywhere we uh you know i don't i don't really have anything i'm i'm almost done with resident evil for the resident evil 4 remake real exciting time in my life so there's really
Mike00:17:41nothing going on in your life is what this is really it's really not got it really one thing
Sonny00:17:45i will i will say i i don't know i don't actually know if any tickets will be left by the time we we we tape this episode but we've got a on uh the other show one of the other show one of the many other shows that i do across the movie aisle we're doing a live show at the crystal city alamo draft house we're showing we're there for a screening of war games we're gonna do a show afterwards it's like uh the parent the apocalyptic moment in 1980 cinema which is an interesting uh kind of thing jvl you said that war games gave you nightmares as a child oh yeah absolutely it was terrifying because of the
JVL00:18:22about uh nuclear war at quaker school and uh the library was packed full of books about nuclear war and uh it was a i would say a constant subject and there was you know if that uh that crazy reagan wins we're gonna have a nuclear war everybody so you should get ready for that like what people they're like yeah he's elected president there will be nuclear war i remember asking i was like do people know this and he was like oh yeah yeah they know i'm like then who's gonna fucking vote for him that's insane i do you think i think we
Sonny00:18:56really tortured i think well i think i say we i think i think grown-ups in the 1980s uh and 70s uh really tortured kids with all this nuclear annihilation talk like it really it really wasn't i don't think it was necessary because it's not like i've always the uh there's the very funny um a bit from an early season like first season of south park i think where they're talking about how if there's if a volcano blows up you should duck and cover and it's kids like ducking and covering under their desk and then the lava going over them and turning them into skeletons immediately like that's that's all duck and cover is like i don't even know why you would bother teaching children how to survive and just be like if
JVL00:19:35it happens it happens oh no no this was not uh this is not we're gonna teach you how to survive this is just letting you know that if the fascists the fires nuclear war things
Sonny00:19:45happen you're all gonna die horribly speaking of uh i saw the trailer for oppenheimer the
JVL00:19:52imminent oh how how excited are you to have barbie 3x the opening weekend gross of oppenheimer well are you gonna be you you will be moved to i'll be i'll be just no i i don't think
Sonny00:20:04it's gonna be 3x but i i think it's definitely gonna it will outgross oppenheimer certainly but what's interesting uh is that the the tracking on barbie is very interesting the the un the unaided awareness is very high but the interest is very low i heard this
Mike00:20:21on your other podcast
Sonny00:20:22anyway uh just showing for all my podcasts here go see go live across the movie aisle tuesday may 16th 7 30 draft house crystal city uh 7 30 war games uh seven dollars it's only seven dollars i mean there's there's actually there's only at this point i think there are only 14 tickets left so again this might be we're taping this on tuesday night it might be sold out by the time i sold out real quick people people excited to see war games for dollars um uh but uh but on on the bulwark goes to hollywood i was talking to david heron of the quorum and he was saying that the uh the the tracking numbers are very interesting because unaided awareness very high uh on barbie but interest is very low which is a real problem like if you if you have a mismatch like that it suggests that there is uh like that that's harder to overcome than there being an equal amount of awareness and interest because you can always create awareness you just spend money on advertising
JVL00:21:22the trailers for it have been very bad the trailers have been so bad who's the movie for
Mike00:21:27is it for adults great question girl bosses because great question like i the one i have seen like rolling in front of i don't know youtube ads or you know youtube videos it's like ryan gosling and margot robbie and there's like a joke about how he's he wants to spend the night with her and she's like what would we do and he's like i don't know and it's like get it because they don't have genitals because they're dolls and i'm like what is this not for little girls
Sonny00:21:58because that is not a little kid joke at all and what what's the what's the joke at the end it's like beach off we're doing a uh maybe i'd or something i press skip ad at that point yeah
JVL00:22:10it's it's uh i i just i don't so so listen mike you were not around for this but i have our animated series called barbie life in the dream house oh i've heard you've i i'm well aware of your chilling for this show they're like four minute bits right and they are genius and i i can already tell they're going to be five times better than anything in this movie
Sonny00:22:40it really looks terrible uh but it is going to gross more than oppenheimer i'm sure which will be fairly disappointing uh because we are a fallen people we deserve you loved the show girls and you're gonna love barbie the movie no but that's not but like girls is did you watch girl you didn't watch girls jbl because it was on hbo but girls girls is actually like an incredibly there's i i i am i am sympathetic to the argument that girls is actually a reactionary portrait of modern life this is ross dalthus uh point it's it is well this jbl is gonna jbl is currently throwing things at the screen right now but it is uh it is this is the dalthadian position which is that basically it is like a portrait of the absolute emptiness of modern uh millennial life a portrait of of a generation in crisis um and and it was not it was like it was the opposite in a weird way of sex in the city it was not like an empowerment thing at all it was like this is these people live awful terrible lives which i don't think that's what barbie's gonna be like but i don't we'll see
Mike00:23:44all right well the only thing mike how was your how's your weekend the only thing i have to lead here but i gotta give it to the old school original listeners of the original show here
JVL00:23:58this weekend i laid some mulch oh yeah the mulch man cometh all right i've showed a little leg
Mike00:24:11here let's uh let's move on i think what don't no there's nothing there's nothing else to say mulch there's nothing else which kind what was it colored oh yeah it was brown um sorry colored mulch it was it was it was it was dark brown mulch uh but delivered in okay so i will say this about my mulch uh delivery so we have done it both ways we have gotten bags before and we've gotten the giant pile dumped on our driveway the yard of mulch uh yeah exactly the cubic cubic yard yeah all of that um this year we i think we did it the right way which was we had bags delivered on like a giant pallet and they're still sitting yes because the thing is and of course with like our situation where we've got baseball every weekend we've got you know a newborn baby still or all you know i guess moving into not no longer newborn but still a needy baby like i don't know when we're going to finish everything so like throw a few bags of mulch on where when we can and then like we'll try again next weekend so that's what we did so this is our first weekend doing it we did the front beds you know here's the problem i live on a cul-de-sac which is great um every single house that uh is on our cul-de-sac is occupied by at least one person and most of most of them by two people who do not have regular jobs they're all retired uh uh there's one stay-at-home uh wife and so like they have all the time in the world in fact one of our neighbors are retired neighbors like we're out there like just try like given the the big boys like just you know make work jobs uh yeah go move all the weeds that i threw over there in that pile into this other pile sort of thing um and you know and she comes over and she's like i don't know how you guys have the time to do all this and we're like looking up at her like yeah like that's that's like that's exactly why our yard looks like shit and everybody else's yard looks great um we're trying to make it work okay lady um so you know it was there's nothing much to say except was it like a passive-aggressive thing no no it was it was meant in it was meant in just the kindest you know spirit but it was it was a additional indication that some neighbors around us they notice don't no not even that just don't have a full awareness of what it's like anymore to have like a bunch of young kids running around you know like they sort of like they're sort of like it was almost like it was dawning on her like oh gosh like you actually like you know you both work you have these kids you like have all this stuff and like i don't know how you have time to like make your yard look nice you know it was just kind of this like in in the moment realization so um you know we're making do you know in texas you could legally shoot her under your stand your ground laws it was it wasn't aggressive it wasn't aggressive believe me if if there are plenty of other aggressive things that have been said uh that that i could maybe um use that law no it's it's fine it's nice it's everybody's very kind about it in the cul-de-sac so how many bags how
JVL00:27:45many bags did we did we spread or how many no how many bags did you did you buy um gosh i have to
Mike00:27:52go back and check uh because i got it like in ballpark bulk um 50 if 70 i think seven yeah i
JVL00:28:01think how much do you pay for 70 bags of mulch um i'll tell you i'm gonna i'm efforting this right now um because that's what i'm curious about is what the price differential is for getting it
Mike00:28:12bagged versus the the dump 70 bags it cost us uh less than 350 dollars five dollars
Sonny00:28:22a bag yeah it's a steel it's the mulch steel of the year when you get it in bulk when you get it
Mike00:28:28in bulk like that um but it's just order it from lowes no no i order it from a um from a local um landscape supply gotcha so gotcha yeah so so it was mulching all all on sunday it was wonderful it was great and uh mulch um is there anything else we can say about mulch is there mulch because i just say mulch a few more times
Sonny00:28:52just to give the fans something all right mulch that's what the people are chanting right now in
Mike00:28:56their cars mulch mulch mulch well if that's the case let's move on shall we gentlemen let's talk about the box office everybody's done with mulch okay uh the box office this past weekend super mario brothers movie remains at the top continues to super smash the competition ranking in number one getting just under 60 million dollars in this last week their total uh domestic gross is something like 430 something million dollars it's it's huge uh just behind super mario brothers movie is evil dead rise and coming in at number three is the movie we're talking about tonight guy ritchie's the covenant i should be careful guy ritchie's the covenant number four john wick chapter four number five dungeons and dragons honor among thieves uh super mario still at the top any box office thoughts before we dive into that number three movie guy
Sonny00:29:52ritchie's the covenant uh i mean i i think what's interesting uh with super mario brothers i mean it dropped 35 percent in its second weekend which is uh an amazing hold uh again this movie's gonna gross 600 million dollars probably it is it's it's doing very good uh because it's so good box office it's it's the people love it uh the people love it um uh evil dead rise uh ticked up all weekend it was tracking around a little under 20 million it ended up early projections were 22 it ended up at 24 which again just uh it's interesting though like look uh i i i'm not i'm not breaking any news here but the things that do well at the box office are franchises and things that have high name recognition and high id so something like or evil dead rise i mean it's interesting to compare evil dead rise to uh the pope's exorcist or renfield both of which grossed about nine million bucks in their opening weekends um there is there is a market for franchises and things that our franchise like and it is uh it's kind of tough sledding for everything else um including the covenant uh which has its own weird uh box office history here but uh how
JVL00:31:14many screens was the covenant on uh it got it got a wide release it it was on three thousand my 26 26 100 it was on only a single screen at my theater and it was a a very small screen yes yeah same
Sonny00:31:28with me it it's it's on 2600 screens uh in its opening weekend it will probably be i i would guess it's probably on about the same this weekend and then it's going to fall to like 800 on its third weekend um because i would assume there's some sort of tax incentive here most of the way these things are structured is if you're going to get a tax break on a movie you need to be in a certain number of screens i would guess the number is probably 2500 screens if i had to guess um but uh but the uh but the you know this this movie and Guy Ritchie's previous movie which came out like a month ago i don't think we even talked about it uh operation fortune ruse daguerre remember yes remember we did not talk about it operation fortune ruse daguerre that came out a month ago both of these uh were movies that were produced under the stx label stx of course was a um it's a it's a movie production fund that was heavily funded i believe by china and they are kind of getting out of the western cinema game because it is not working for them they are not they they can't they can't figure out how to make it work um but it was also an mgm movie which of course mgm just bought by amazon like there's a whole weird thing there nobody quite knows nobody at amazon really wants to do anything with the stuff for mgm that was already made which creates all sorts of problems um uh but you know this this movie like operation more screens than it should have for how much awareness there is of the movie uh and like operation fortune ruse de guerra is going to kind of die at the box office here because it again there's just there's no real advertising campaign for it there's no awareness and it's
Mike00:33:08too bad because it's a good movie right guys right yeah let's get into it uh wait before we get into it though question because i do wonder this this is box office related the guy richie uh you know appendage at the front of this movie i understand there was another movie right a horror movie called the covenant or something but like does that is there a box office reason is there a marketing reason as well for adding this to the front um that's a really interesting
Sonny00:33:40question and i would i would have to i i would be very curious to know how exactly this came about because um guy richie is frankly not a box office draw he just isn't uh if you if you look at basically everything he has made excluding aladdin which grossed a billion dollars because it was a live action disney movie um if you look at pretty much everything else he has done it is underperformed relative to i think what people might have expected um you know the uh wrath of man and the gentleman are kind of came out in a weird situation because it was like the gentleman came out like the last weekend before the pandemic um or like two weekends before the pandemic um and wrath of man was one of the first movies one of the first big movies to get a release post pandemic you know it was still pandemic era there were still like lots of theaters were still closed um etc um so he those those movies not not a super fair um comparison point you know relative trying to figure out what what exactly his his box office draw is but i mean i i would i would say as somebody who really likes lots of guy richie movies not all of them but lots of them um he is he he frequently underperforms i mean remember chav king arthur yes on the show i mean that that movie was supposed to be the start of a whole cinematic universe a whole chav king arthur universe uh with all the knights of the round table getting individual entries and that movie just bombed spectacularly it was not a people did not people the people were not into it um were interested and that is i think more common than not in his uh box office history i mean look at the man from uncle which did okay not not spectacular not terrible but just just okay um at a at a time when lots of things were doing really well uh in that that sort of space so the problem
JVL00:35:40is his movies are too good for the for the people i think that's i think that is at least
Sonny00:35:44partly true i think that is i think i'm not kidding no i agree i agree yeah i just i just
Mike00:35:49know that when i saw this movie and i texted my friends about it again 35 year old males it's anecdata it was all like oh yeah i've heard of that movie i i you know because of the guy richie connection you know it was like again it was it was a higher awareness than i predicted but it was because of the
Sonny00:36:07guy richie thing right i mean i think i think guy richie is a name that that movie fans will recognize even if they aren't necessarily going to show up for his stuff i mean i like it i mean i i like snatch is is uh was it was very popular um uh certainly amongst a certain males uh who were you know a certain age of 15 and 25 you know in 2000 um i like i i think he is i think he is uh he is a name that people recognize but don't i don't think it's not like steven spielberg or christopher nolan no it's more like wes anderson yeah but i think even wes anderson has a slightly better track record he's also wes anderson's also working on a slightly lower budget level i think then yeah but i but i love guy rich i mean look we you know we'll we'll get to we'll get to the proper review of the covenant here in a few minutes uh at minute maybe 40
Mike00:37:07we're already at 30 i mean or you could just launch into it now sonny i just i i had so
Sonny00:37:11many questions but no but what but what i what i really love about guy richie's recent work is he's released four there have been four guy richie movies in the last four years right there was uh the gentleman in 2020 um wrath of man in 2021 i think or maybe 2022 um and then uh in the last month here you've had operation fortune ruse de guerre and the covenant and all four of these movies are very very different they're all very different pictures there's he has you know kind of his classic guy richie british gangster movie with the gentleman um wrath of man is like a 1970s uh guy richie's heat guy richie's heat is one way to think of it but i i like almost more of like a 1970s uh almost grind housey uh crime thriller type movie just like a really brutal film actually it's like a very it's it's almost hard to watch in places um it is just very intense and uh violent in a way that his movies really hadn't been uh up to to that point um then you have operation fortune ruse de guerre which is kind of like a james bond spoof type movie a lot of fun i liked it a lot um and then this movie which is a very straightforward arguably the most earnest movie he has ever made the least irony soaked the most earnest movie he has ever made um straightforward war film like this is a this is a movie that uh that you i i would expect to come from somebody like um what's his name peter bird right this feels like a peter bird movie not a black down yeah or or like a black hawk down um and it's great it's it's really really good so jake gyllenhaal stars as a uh a staff sergeant in afghanistan um he is out doing some i trying to blow up an ied factory uh with his guys they take he's got a new new interpreter with him um who uh is you know who knows the country really well and he he like takes charge of certain situations which jake gyllenhaal's sergeant kind of resents a little bit but like also understands that this guy knows what he's doing he's he's confident um they go out to blow up this ied factory and the taliban shows up and uh his whole squadron gets killed and the the interpreter gets him back to safety now that's that's the setup like all this is in the first all of this is in the first minute of the trailer so i feel like i'm not really spoiling anything but it's also the first hour of the film like the the first thing i was struck by in with this picture is kind of how it is structured and paced this this whole this whole section what is essentially the setup for the way it's been pitched which is jake gyllenhaal returns to afghanistan to rescue his interpreter from the taliban that's only like the last 25 minutes of the movie which is wild to me i like i don't i don't know if you guys were expecting it to be paced uh differently or or structured differently than it is but it was it was like the the it is not a movie that is strictly speaking about jake gyllenhaal trying to rescue his interpreter even though that is what it is about it is about the the interpreter saving this guy's life at very great risk to himself to his family etc etc again uh the way i describe this movie is it's the most earnest least irony drenched guy ritchie film ever made um and i think that is because there is a there's a simmering anger under the uh uh uh under the surface here a a a frustration um that i frankly share with the writer and the director uh about how america treated the afghan interpreters and allies in the um closing months and years of that conflict and as jvl says we might get into this a little bit more um but it uh it's a it's a it's a um the movie it most reminded me of as i was watching it was lone survivor did you guys see lone survivor the peterberg movie um uh but it was it's it's the story of uh marcus latrell yes latrell uh michael and michael murphy um danny dietzen and matthew axelson um who uh they were they were uh they were just a squad of soldiers in afghanistan who tracked down a high value target um ended up getting chased by the taliban through the mountains they sent out uh the like it's it's a it's a crazy part of the movie um because i remember i remember the the crash of the helicopter team that went to go see them i remember reading about this thing oh my god this is horrible they guys died in this this rescue attempt um but in the movie it's played as like the climactic swelling here comes the cavalry to save everybody and then the helicopter crashes into a mountain it's like oh fuck that's not good um uh which is anyway i i i uh i love that movie and i like this movie for similar reasons which is a that it is a pretty straightforward tale of heroism and it is just really it's just really well done really straightforward stylish without being showy um for the most part and really well acted i mean i i texted you guys after i got out of the theater i was like oh wait that johnny lee miller plays the colonel in this movie and i was and he looks i mean he looks like a 40 year old colonel i was like oh i feel a billion years old because i remember johnny lee miller from hackers and train spotting no no no uh scottish accent that kid and you know now he's the the figure of authority he was also john major in uh uh the the last season of the crown i don't know anyway uh i like this movie a lot it's really well done everything about it is great um curious to see what you guys made of it so jvl i'll come to you
Mike00:43:07in just a second but because you brought it up sonny the the pacing and structure of the movie i was trying to think about what it felt like and it felt like it felt like a short story um in the way in the structure where a short story often feels like it crams a lot of information into uh uh into a short story um and something about the the kind of there's almost episodic structure of it you know there's like the first part where uh the ied team you know kind of comes together and then uh and and they go out to the site that they that they suspect of being an ied uh factory or whatever and then and then it all goes to shit like that's like an episode and then the the uh the the sort of uh march through the i don't know the wilderness uh that uh that the interpreter and jake gyllenhaal take you know like that's another episode and then the end which you would think that's what the entire movie is i went into this cold i had no idea what the movie was really even about except an afghan interpreter and so but like that last like had this kind of i don't know i don't know why i think of short story but it just had this um this structure that reminded me of it it also like it it's two hours long and it did not feel two hours long it felt like it really kind of like whizzed by as well maybe that's you know contributing to my sense of this as being a short story um and so it just it felt different watching it like it just felt like a different kind of movie not just a different kind of guy richie movie uh which i don't feel like uh you see a lot of movies plotted and structured that way well i
Sonny00:44:58mean if you if you went through this movie and broke it down scene by scene um with the exception of part of that that bit in the middle where they're there uh where after jake gyllenhaal's character has been injured and his interpreter is taking him back to um the base every individual scene conveys a piece of information i mean every every individual scene it's it's a very well it's very well structured on a moment by moment basis because every every time you stop in a place uh for for more than a minute you're learning something about the characters or the situation so the movie opens with this um essentially they they're at a checkpoint they the the first the the squadron's initial interpreter is there and he's trying to figure out what's going on with um a truck that has stopped and a button and a couple people die he he gets blown up one of the this is this these are the dangers these are the stakes here's here's where everybody is uh and then as the as the film progresses with the the new interpreter um you see him uh behave in a manner that is both competent and confident um that was not present with the first interpreter he's just he's just better at his job um and uh he's not just translating he's interpreting right
Mike00:46:15and that's right yeah right so anyway no no i i i loved it jvl i would love i would love to hear your thoughts because i have other thoughts but i just i want to know what you you thought because you saw it first and you were like blown away yeah i i thought it was
JVL00:46:33a very powerful movie uh i mean i should lay my cards on the table this is something the plight of afghanistan and afghani interpreters is something that i has been on my mind a lot uh because we've run a bunch of pieces from the bulwark about it i have a friend who uh spent a lot of time over there who has been involved in uh literally the the exact type of thing that the movie ends with which is these off the books extractions uh he has been involved in that there's a whole whole universe of guys who are current military and former military who serve there who you know like they've stayed in touch with their their interpreters and when everything two years ago uh they sprang into action to do everything they could and now they're anyway it's uh it it's a horrifying breach of american honor and what we did but the movie itself is fantastic and it is the tension that exists throughout as you say sonny the doling the sense of geography about it is i think what impressed me most in that no matter what's happening you always know exactly where you are in the movie you know whether in the macro sense of you know how far you are from bagram or are you on a hill or in a valley or even just when you get to the firefights so you know when when you wind up at the checkpoint right Guy Ritchie establishes very clearly like where is this checkpoint how how to where the where the soldiers where the cars lined up so that when things happen you understand them and this is this is a trademark of ridley scott action set pieces right you know ridley scott always make sure that everybody understands where everything is as action is happening and uh i don't i mean the when the squad eventually gets ambushed and killed at the ied factory that scene which again is a very black hawk down scene you understand where everybody every member of that team is right you understand where the taliban members are coming from uh it's i i just think it's one of the best war movies i've ever seen
Sonny00:49:08it is it's it's it's really really well done again the the action beats are all exceptionally good um and i i was saying this before uh before we got before we got started here um it there's a the a movie that this reminds me of a little bit is um because it's not based on a true story this is not like lone survivor this is not this is a fictionalized story um and and what this movie reminds me a little bit of is uh like rambo 2 um first first blood part 2 right which is uh which is essentially um uh the the american cinematic industrial complex being like this time we're gonna win vietnam we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna send rambo in there we're gonna get our guys out and the pow flags are gonna come down because we're gonna get them all out it's gonna be great um and there is there's a there's a certain amount of um uh as i mean as jbl says this is a thing that happens it's not it's not this is not totally you know out of the realm of possibility all of everything in this movie happening but like there's a title card at the end that says you know three three hundred have been killed already murdered uh thousands more living in hiding um out of fear of retribution from the taliban who have retaken the country uh and um that is the reality of the story the reality is not jake gyllenhaal parachuting into uh afghanistan and going undercover and getting his guy out for the most part it happens for the most part that is not that is not the reality the reality is these guys are getting fucking murdered and their families are getting killed and it's uh uh i mean it's you know you can't tell that story i mean like the it's that that is not a that is not a that's not a pleasing uh story no matter how true it is so you instead you get this which is sort of again like this time we're gonna do it right this time we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna get the guys out who deserve to get out has it has anyone
Mike00:51:15interpreted the final act of the of this movie in the same way that sonny you interpreted top gun maverick which is that the end is like a is a fantasy sequence within the within the context of the movie um i mean because there he's dead on the bridge you mean no no i mean before he dies no no i mean the the sort of um you know before he even goes there right i mean just like that you know i mean i'm i'm making this up on the fly i don't know i'm this is not a sophisticated theory here or anything but you know just thinking about i don't
Sonny00:51:51no no but i don't think that i don't think that read really that really i don't i don't think that really works it doesn't make um much sense um but the but uh but there was
Mike00:52:00a fantasy element to it right it was your is your point well there's there's there's
Sonny00:52:04a there's a hollywood element to it right which is like there's this there's this great you know spoilers i guess i i mean but um there's this great moment where they're in a shootout on the bridge really seriously spoilers if you if you want to go see the shootout so they they they jake gyllenhaal takes his guy to this extraction point he's got the family there and they're they're gonna they're waiting for uh the these contractors to show up with their helicopter to extract them and get them out of there but they're pinned down on the bridge and they're they're out of ammo and the taliban are coming down the pike and you know he's taking his last breath and he's looking around and all of a sudden the ac-130 specter gunship shows up and blows everybody up and it's just like it's the it's it's the it's one of the purest expressions of american propaganda i've seen on film in a lot in a long time i loved it i love just like this there's a shot of the of the of the ac-130 gunship as it goes across it's just us air force across the side of it beautiful coming in as the the savior um of these guys and you know superior american firepower there's something to be said for it um but uh but i uh but like i mean i could see thinking that that that that moment is kind of dreamlike but it's just it's just that's it's just hollywood
Mike00:53:26storytelling yes right again maybe it's not actually but it does have it does have this sort of you know as you were saying an alternative history element to it you know and and there's a metaphor here in in terms of you know what what if the united states uh you know actually did this for its uh for the afghan interpreters you know actually did come in and save the day um can i can i say also like for somebody who's been i like been watching war movies since i was a kid you know and then in the post 9-11 era that have such a heavy-handed politicalness to them that they're just like hard to watch if like you go back and some of those old like you know post 9-11 like you know robert redford war movies or it's just like so didactic and for an extremely pointed movie you know or you know a movie as you said that the writer and the director here are clearly angry and enraged about this it wears that politicalness so lightly and in a way where you like you just you just feel this you feel the outrage because of the story you've just seen yeah not because there's that told you've been lectured to to feel the outrage well there's
Sonny00:54:57there's a a similar a similar thing happens in Michael Bay's Benghazi movie 13 hours which isn't is a movie that could have been a much more political thing as you say as could have been the case here but what it is a the way the way the politics come through is just the the complete absence of action the complete the the way bureaucracy kind of bungles everything and gets everything bogged down in in incompetence and failure that is that's the that is the political angle here more than anything else
Mike00:55:33it is not a yeah it's not directed or anything like that yeah right right to the extent that
JVL00:55:40the bureaucracy yeah right but i mean two two other things i wanted to say um one which is a screenwriting credit really um so when jake gyllenhaal's character our protagonist the reason he goes back to to rescue his interpreter is not because he and his interpreter are best friends it's not because they were close uh it's it's literally because he can't not do it because he feels so indebted and there's a scene where he you know he's talking to you know it's not like this is my friend and you've got to get him out he talks to he's talking to the colonel and he says i have this hook in me and i've tried every way i can to not have it but it's there right and i can't the only way to take this hook out is to repay my debt and that's a really nice way of not sentimentalizing the movies i mean maybe it's sentimental it's in a different way but it's not in the obvious way uh the other thing that i think was pretty sophisticated is that the movie without making a show of it does a very very deft job of explaining why america lost in afghanistan and it you know we you know the old i think i think it's a vietnam adage right you know you have the watches but we have the time and that you know america has predator drones everywhere and so the the american squad that might be going to an ambush is able to call up in 30 seconds from their humvees aerial footage from a predator drone. Which seems like this amazing advantage until you realize that the taliban have two million people with cell phones just walking around on the street so that no matter where you are there is some taliban sympathizer who's got headphones in and a and a cell phone who can just call in your position right and that they the talent. The weird thing about the afghans is that for a bunch of especially for the taliban sophisticated country bumpkins these people have been fighting wars on and off for four hundred years right they are not unsophisticated warriors and the you know the taliban commanders understand how to lay ambushes and how you like that when they also understand population control and the the the usefulness of savagery yeah yeah and the and so what the movie movie makes all of that plain it also makes plain the desolation of afghanistan right it's a really large country but with the pop you know populations is you have two population centers basically and everything else is spread out and you can't control that country a country that's a spread out like that and you know pop total population afghanistan is 40 million people of those about 10 million give or take are fighting age men no matter how many troops america was going to put in there that country is 10 million men who are capable of fighting like you can't yeah you you just can't do that right you can't you cannot successfully win a conflict in that way uh anyway it's uh it's great people should see it
Mike00:59:09can i say on the on the the movie making front of of kind of making that point or just the point of this sort of relentlessness of the taliban um you know i i don't know like my unsophisticated uh uh sort of way of judging these things is like especially when i'm in a theater it's like how are people reacting and i had um i had a there was like a couple and and their other female friend um were sitting next to me at the alamo draft house and there was some point at some point like you know i can't remember what it was but there were like 20 scenes like this where like another you know 15 taliban guys you know in with machine guns like run over the hill in a truck yeah show up in a truck or like run over the hill or whatever it was and like at some point these the the two ladies who were with there with one of them with their husband they just went oh like oh no like another one you know there was just this kind of like they were so they it had it they had so been captured i think by the like the the hopelessness the the feeling of hopelessness that that that image you know kept sending because it just it never saw it was almost like video game you know it's like oh here's a here's another bunch of baddies like have come over the hill i just thought i thought that was no they're they're fucking sadistic
JVL01:00:34animals yeah and uh you know i'm sorry maybe i shouldn't talk that way about other human beings but uh now the taliban you can get away with it it's it's all right i think well
Sonny01:00:47this i mean this is also how i feel about black hawk down but i don't want to not get into my my feelings when i watch wave after wave of somali uh come after the black hawk down guys um uh one just one last filmmaking note uh to to get uh away from um politics and back to the to the movie the the uh the score of this movie is fantastic the kind of deep strings um a cello or whatever that is uh that the the the uh very evocative of
JVL01:01:18chav king arthur actually well so
Sonny01:01:20the the guy who uh who composed this is christopher benstead um who uh has worked with ritchie now i don't i don't think he worked with him on chaff king arthur hold on let me look that up real quick um but uh so benstead has worked with um with guy ritchie now on let me uh uh on his last four movies the covenant operation fortune ruse daguerre wrath of man and the gentleman and wrath of man is where it most um where this this specific kind of sound most kicks in it really contributes to the sense of dread and like oppressive um tension in that film and it does it does the same thing here it just is is uh a really wonderful um it's a really wonderful piece of composition and scoring and uh i think that the ritchie benstead uh pairing has been tremendously good for the um emotional resonance of guy ritchie's last four pictures and i i really wish more people would see them i mean i again going back to the gentleman is very good in the kind of classic guy ritchie british gangster movie role uh mold but i i think that his masterpiece from this stretch is wrath of man still as much as i like the covenant which i think is very good but wrath of man i think is a is like a genuine um cinematic of brutality masterpiece um that that more folks should see i think it's on prime video
JVL01:02:55and his real masterpiece is chaff king arthur but that's okay that's that's not true don't listen
Mike01:03:02to jbl you know i thought i thought the political talk might blow up but clearly the chaff king
Sonny01:03:07arthur talk is what we need to stay away from uh all right this is long running well we're gonna
Mike01:03:12end it there uh for the night but uh thanks for listening again sub beacon.com you can subscribe comment listen tell us what you think of the show follow sunny bunch at sunny bunch on twitter you're still on twitter yes at sunny bunch you can follow me still uh at michael r warren uh and uh we will see you next time
Sonny01:03:38so we uh we we ended up doing like a weird thing where we talked about jake gyllenhaal for like 20 it wasn't that weird it was it was we talked a lot about like his muscles and his uh oh the eyes remember southpaw when he you you got real he got real like you're getting us started on this again
JVL01:04:06sonny don't get us started he's right it up for something else i saw i saw production photos of him right it up in some new movie roadhouse the road is that roadhouse yeah because he's uh he's he's like a ufc guy yeah he looks like he's down to like point five
Sonny01:04:20percent body fat yeah anyway anyway we talk we talk about uh jake gyllenhaal for a bunch uh in the bonus episode this week and uh you you can listen to that that'll be up on monday so i'm sure anyway until then i'm sure it's fun
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