Jake Gyllenhaal’s Overlooked 2020s Movie Is Dominating Streaming After a Box Office Bust

Guy Ritchie made a war drama last year that barely made a ripple in theaters. Now it is suddenly one of the most-watched movies on Netflix. If you missed The Covenant in 2023, you are clearly not alone — but streaming has turned it into a mini-moment.

How it climbed back

As of this writing, The Covenant is sitting at No. 3 on Netflix in the US, per FlixPatrol. War movies tend to do numbers on streaming, and this one already had the goods critically — it reviewed well back at release — so the late surge tracks.

What the movie actually is

This is not the usual Ritchie swagger-and-gunfire riff. He dials way down on the flash and leans into a more tense, grounded story. Jake Gyllenhaal plays John Kinley, an American soldier whose life is saved in Afghanistan by his local interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim). When Kinley learns Ahmed was denied promised safe passage to the US, he goes back into danger to get Ahmed and his family out. It is straightforward, humane, and a lot more reflective than you might expect from the guy who made the Statham brawlers and those kinetic Sherlock Holmes movies — arguably one of Ritchie’s most restrained, mature efforts.

• Now on Netflix (US): The Covenant is currently No. 3 on the service, according to FlixPatrol
• Ratings snapshot: IMDb 7.5; Rotten Tomatoes 82% critics, 98% audience
• Box office vs. budget: $21.9 million worldwide on a reported $55 million budget
• Release timing: 2023, not long after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which the story directly touches

So why did it tank in theaters?

Short version: timing and muscle. The movie opened in April 2023 with what felt like a soft marketing push and ran straight into IP freight trains. Evil Dead Rise launched the same weekend, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie was still bulldozing the box office. A serious, non-franchise war drama was never going to out-shout those two. End result: strong reviews, weak receipts, $21.9 million total — and then a quick fade.

The delayed payoff

The upside of streaming is that the audience eventually finds stuff like this. The Covenant is finally getting the attention it deserved — not because it suddenly changed, but because the platform did. If you want Ritchie without the whiplash edits and cockney quips, this is the one to queue up.

The Covenant is streaming now on Netflix in the US.