I saw Guy Ritchie‘s The Covenant last night, and was honestly blown away. As in amazed, startled, taken aback. And at the same time mesmerized and soul-panged. It’s a “do the right thing” rescue film against a ruggedly realistic war setting, and except for the formulaic (if irresistably satisfying) final act, it’s pretty close to perfect. Really.

Is it the best Middle Eastern war film since The Hurt Locker? Yeah, I think so. I liked it better that Lone Survivor.

Ritchie, to me, has always been an insincere fiddle-faddler and a cynical wanker, and all of a sudden he’s made a masterful, pared-to-the-bone Afghanistan war film for the ages? Pruned-down realism, emotional restraint, somber emotional tone…what the hell happened to the Ritchie I’ve known since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (’98), or over the last quarter-century?

All these years he’s been saying “I’m a slick hack without a soul, a slick hack without a soul, a slick hack without a soul” and then he’s suddenly saying “wait, scratch that…I’m now a human being with a soul, and I’ve made a lean-and-mean war film that believes in honor and paying your debts and indisputable realism”?

HE to friendo (Friday, 4.21, 8:50 pm): “The Ritchie film is amazing. How could he make a slick, cynical piece of empty shit like Operation Fortune and then turn around and make The Covenant?”

Friendo to HE: “Indeed…How could he make these slick, empty-fake gangster films for 25 years and then make The Covenant? Really glad you liked it!”

Based on a script co-penned by Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, The Covenant feels like it’s based on a true story. It isn’t, but who cares? Remember that hairy combat sequence in The Hurt Locker in which Ralph Fiennes played a pivotal role? That’s what The Convenant mostly feels like apart from a Santa Clarita interlude and the gung-ho finale.

Jake Gyllenhaal is rooted and riveting as U.S. Army sergeant John Kinley, extra-sharp and focused and always looking for trouble out of the corner of his eyes.

But you know who steals this film? The second-billed, 45-year-old Dar Salim as Ahmed, Kinley’s interpreter who’s just as much in the crosshairs as Kinley, and who rescues the wounded Kinley from brutal Taliban termination during Act Two, and in turn is rescued by Kinley in Act Three. (Ritchie’s film was originally titled The Interpreter.)

You can’t take your eyes off Salim through the film, and the only time he doesn’t quite punch through and almost recedes into the background is during the thrilling, action-packed finale, which I didn’t mind at all because it’s truly wonderful to see the bad guys get ripped to pieces with burning hot lead.

And then a certain gut-punch wells up during the end credits, when we’re reminded that more than 300 Afghan interpreters and their families have been murdered by the Taliban, with God knows how many more currently in hiding, despite U.S. authorities having pledged to give them gold-plated visas for travelling to the U.S.

Seriously shot up and sinking in and out of consciousness, Gyllenhaal is carried up and down mountain trails and shielded from Taliban homicidals by Salim. He’s sent back home while Salim remains in-country, but there’s no peace in his soul…not a chance. Jake / Kinley knows he has to covertly return to Afghanistan and somehow get Salim / Ahmed and his family out of Afghanistan and into U.S. soil. It’s not easy and certainly not inexpensive, but the debt must be honored. Eventually it is.

It was only a few weeks ago, in my review of Operation Fortune, that I was insisting that Ritchie is a highly skilled but superficial-minded hack. The Covenant has proved me wrong. He may revert to hackery and whoredom down the road, but from this moment on I will never again call him a soul-less hustler. He has earned new stripes with this film.

Having arrived in the mid to late ’90s and therefore born with the internet in their blood and visually locked into screens, Zoomers are regarded with suspicion by GenX and certainly by boomers, and in some cases loathed.

They’re presumed to be short-attention-spanners who are not that good with face-to-face interactions (i.e., office environments). Self-centered, snooty or derisive with elders and reluctant (and in some cases unwilling) to negotiate or compromise.

Not to mention obstinate, living in their own digital realm, great at multi-tasking, quick to condemn and even boycott (i.e., cancel) those whom they regard as not up to speed in terms of progressive social issues.

They’re regarded as whiners, political hard-heads and job-hoppers…basically a pain in the ass.

If a couple of GenZ pilots were to magically time-travel to Barranca, the port-of-call in Only Angels Have Wings, they almost certainly wouldn’t last five minutes. Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) would see right through their entitled attitudes and dismiss their worthless asses before their first flight. He wouldn’t even let them drink at the bar. Plus they wouldn’t understand the emotional meaning of Thomas Mitchell‘s two-headed coin.

During last night’s “Overtime” segment, Bill Maher got into it with psychotherapist and sex educator Esther Perel. She ducked and dithered over the Dalai Lama’s “suck my tongue, kid” moment, and Bill challenged her sincerity in deciding to say nothing.

It starts at the 7:50 mark.

HE viewpoint: An 87 year-old holy man asking a tweener to suck his tongue is obviously perverse. One could go so far as to call it diseased.

What possible rationale could the 14th Dalai Lama have had in his head before saying this? My soul is so radiantly merged and perfectly harmonized with the infinite stream that whatever I, in a certain sense a mere mortal with the earthly name of Gyalwa Rinpoche…whatever I might say or think or do is so small and puny and insignificant that it can’t possibly interfere with the cosmic overall that represents the centrality of my being?

I am the Spiritual Bliss King of Tibet — I can do anything.

Whenever I run into Martin Scorsese, I say “Marty! Kundun! I liked it! I don’t want you to suck my tongue because you’re almost my age, for God’s sake, but I love you as much as the tweener child in question. We all need to offer the tips of our tongues to each other!”

Being woke refers to “waking up to invisible alleged societal injustices, based on genetically inherited attributes — race, sex/gender and sexual orientation. And further, it creates a heirarchy, based on these genetic attributes, that says you’re either an oppressor or a member of an oppressed class.”

This is it — couldn’t be simpler or more concisely stated.

Matt Johnson‘s BlackBerry (IFC Films, 5.12) gets an HE stamp of approval, but at the same time it’s not as good as that Rotten Tomatoes 96% rating would indicate.

A couple of months ago Deadline‘s Pete Hammond said it was “as triumphant and tragic as Elvis“…nope. But it’s pretty good, and sometimes better than that. It’s certainly not a burn.

It’s a business-and-nothing-but saga of the meteoric rise and tragic collapse of the Blackberry device, spanning between the mid ’90s and 2012 or thereabouts.

I was never a BlackBerry owner but I loved the look of the later models (the convergent smartphone BlackBerry wasn’t released until ’02), and I understood the love from owners that I knew.

The three main characters are co-founder Mike Lazaridis (a white-haired Jay Baruchel), Jim Balsillie (a bald-headed Glenn Howerton) and Douglas Fregin (Johnson). It’s broken up into three chapters — awkward beginnings, riding high and crash-and-burn.

I didn’t really believe the first third (too clumsy and infantile), but the downfall section is quite gripping. BlackBerry is nowhere close to The Social Network, which is heads and shoulders more believable and better made. But it feels authentic (mostly) and generally hangs together

I’m not blaming Hammond for overselling BlackBerry in his Deadline review. He was a BlackBerry guy for years and years, and was shouldering a considerable emotional investment. Understandable.

To my slight surprise I liked Howerton’s “baldy” Balsillie more than I expected to. He’s a flinty hardnose with an explosive temper, but at least he’s a realist, which is more than you can say for Lazaridis and Fregin, or at least how they’re portrayed.

During the first half Baruchel and especially Johnson WAY overplay the nerd-child behavior…these guys behave like precocious twits who are verbally clumsy and certainly inarticulate, and they don’t seem to have a semblance of a notion of how to behave in a business-world realm. Guys this infantile and retarded can’t survive — I just didn’t believe their performances.

Johnson’s performance is especially infuriating. There’s an Act One scene in which he and Baruchel are making a presentation with an easel and several posterboards, and Johnson drops the presentation cards THREE TIMES. After the third time I threw up my hands and said “fuck this guy.” And he behaves like a precocious eight-year-old autistic savant. Over and over he’ll say maybe six or seven words to Baruchel and then freeze with his mouth open….stop acting with your mouth open!! And the GAH-GAH-DUHH-DUHH expression…Jesus!

Johnson to Howerton during their first meeting: “The internet is like the force….have you seen Star Wars?” Howerton (around 32 at the time) says no. What 30 year-old hadn’t seen Star Wars by the early ’90s? Howerton was 16 or 17 when it came out. No way he hadn’t seen it!

I can’t overemphasize how much I hated Johnson’s performance. I HATE GUYS LIKE THIS…guys with their infantile nerd-genius personalities and the head bandana and terrible dress sense. There’s no way the real Doug Fregin looked or behaved like that….there’s no way he used that frozen, open-mouthed, brain-meltdown expression over and over. I never want to see Johnson in a movie ever again. I wanted to see him shot or get hit by a car.

But the film is definitely decent and sometimes better than. It certainly held my interest, although it seemed to under-dramatize the heyday period. I wanted more specifics, more details about the tech and how this and that happened. The best parts of the film are the opening and closing chapters.

It should be noted that the real Mike Lazaridis, who’s worth hundreds of millions, appears to weigh at least twice as much as Jay Baruchel.