Production notes

It was announced in October 2021 that Jake Gyllenhaal was cast to star in an untitled film, to be directed by Guy Ritchie, and co-written with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. In January 2022, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought U.S. distribution rights to the film, which had been titled The Interpreter, planning to distribute it via their United Artists Releasing joint venture, while STXfilms co-financed the film and handled international sales; Amazon Prime Video acquired some international distribution rights, as well as post-theatrical streaming rights in the United States. Filming began in February 2022 in Alicante, Spain, with Dar Salim, Alexander Ludwig, Antony Starr, Jason Wong, Bobby Schofield, Sean Sagar, Christian Ochoa and Emily Beecham added to the cast. Other filming locations in Spain later included Petrer, Alicante, Sax, Alicante, Alt Vinalopó / Alto Vinalopó, Villajoyosa and Zaragoza. In December 2022, Ritchie revealed that the title had been changed from The Interpreter to The Covenant. The film was later officially titled Guy Ritchie's The Covenant, reportedly to distinguish it from the unrelated 2006 film.

In the United States and Canada, The Covenant was released alongside Evil Dead Rise, Chevalier, and the wide expansion of Beau Is Afraid, and was projected to gross around $6 million from 2,611 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $2.2 million on its first day, and went on to debut to $6.3 million, finishing third behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Evil Dead Rise. In its second weekend the film made $3.6 million (a drop of 43%), finishing in ninth.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 119 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "A satisfying, well-acted war thriller with surprising dramatic depths, Guy Ritchie's The Covenant tells a solid story with impressive restraint." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 92% positive score, with 77% saying they would recommend it. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 and a half stars out of 4, commenting on the use of Ritchie's name in the title by stating: "one can’t help but wonder if he did so because “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” is such a departure from the norm, with the director leaving many of the tools in his trick bag untouched in favor of a relatively traditional and admirably staged war film that features some of the most impressively staged extended battle sequences in recent memory, with moments so intense you’ll have to remember to breathe." Roeper also praised the film as effectively generating empathy for the two protagonists. The Daily Beast was also positive, praising the film for its criticism of US foreign policy, describing it as "a sober military thriller that excoriates Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan in 2021 and, in the process, to strand the thousands of local interpreters who had risked their lives to aid the American cause." The publication also praised the film's dramatic tension, Ed Wild's cinematography, and the performances of Salim and Gyllenhaal. Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, praising the first half of the film and the performances by Dar Salim and Jake Gyllenhaal, but ultimately concluding "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." Daniels ruminates on the closing scenes of the film, remarking that the use of an AC-130 gunship only serves to amplify the tonal mismatch between the first and second halves of the film: "As black site contractors use an AC-130 gunship (an angel of death) to help Kinley and Ahmed, should we be grateful for the overwhelming firepower on display or rightfully horrified?" Gregory Nussen rates the film 1 and a half stars out of 4 in his Slant Magazine review, echoing other critiques about the film's odd endorsement of the Global War on Terror. "As for the war itself, Ritchie, Davies, and Atkinson never interrogate American exceptionalism, the effectiveness of brute force tactics, or the logic of a 20-year engagement in a country far removed from the events of 9/11. With the first title screen at the end of The Covenant announcing, eulogy-like, that the Taliban re-established rule as soon as American troops left the area, the filmmakers also implicitly suggest that leaving was a mistake, essentially endorsing the same never-ending warfare that their script initially and half-heartedly criticizes."