FILM

Brothers in arms: Interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim) and soldier John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal).

★★★★ OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT TBC / 123 MINS

DIRECTOR Guy Ritchie

CAST Jake Gyllenhaal, Dar Salim, Sean Sagar, Jason Wong, Rhys Yates, Bobby Schofield, Emily Beecham, Jonny Lee Miller

PLOT Sergeant John Kinley (Gyllenhaal) is serving in the US army in Afghanistan, with help from local interpreter Ahmed (Salim). When Kinley is wounded, Ahmed risks his life and the lives of his family to help, ending up on the Taliban’s Most Wanted list as a result.

WHEN THE US army withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, it abandoned hundreds of Afghan interpreters who had risked their lives working against the Taliban. Instead of getting visas to relocate to the US, as they had been promised, at least 300 interpreters were killed by Taliban forces. This grim framework might not seem the most obvious inspiration for a Guy Ritchie film, but Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels this ain’t. The specific story Ritchie tells is fictional, but fairly plausible: Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) is working with interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim), deep in Taliban-controlled land, when Kinley is injured. Somehow, Ahmed manages to transport him, by hook or by crook, 100 clicks back to safety. Will he be handsomely rewarded for his efforts? That would be a spoiler. Ritchie does well to keep things feeling tense. Cinema isn’t always the best medium for showcasing endurance challenges; stamina is perhaps the virtue most difficult to dramatise on screen. While the sheer distance, temperatures and physical challenges faced by Ahmed are impressive, it’s obviously all going to feel much more tense in the moments when he encounters Taliban search parties and gets to slip into more standard spy/action movie mode. Similarly, Gyllenhaal’s challenge is to get us invested in the value of persistence in the face of indifference — not exactly the stuff of which Mission: Impossible movies are made.