SINGAPORE – Is Jake Gyllenhaal aiming to be Hollywood’s next big action hero?
In the big-budget thriller Ambulance (2022), he was a robber speeding along the shallow Los Angeles River in a getaway vehicle. And in his new movie, the war drama The Covenant, he is an American soldier trading gunfire with the Taliban.
Gyllenhaal, 42, laughs when asked if he is trying to be an action star. He and his Covenant co-star, Iraq-born Danish actor Dar Salim, are speaking at an online press event.
“Would you want to know if it’s a conscious choice? Yeah, I think it’s somewhat conscious to want to try variation and move in different worlds,” he says.
The desire to get physical comes from an American actor known for dramatic roles such as that of a lovelorn cowboy in Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
He has also earned acclaim for playing oddballs, such as creepy news cameraman Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler (2014) and the disturbed title character in Donnie Darko (2001).
Gyllenhaal and British film-maker Guy Ritchie have been friends for more than a decade and had talked about working together. One day, Ritchie showed him a skeletal version of the screenplay.
The actor says: “It started with a 60-page script and then it evolved. We discovered the movie as we went. It’s always lovely to be physical. You know, I’m a physical person and I like that.”
That discovery included plenty of military and survival action sequences from Ritchie, who is known for creating cynical, darkly comic male banter.
Thrillers such as The Gentlemen (2019), Snatch (2000) and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels (1998) feature Ritchie’s speciality – the hyper-verbal British gangster.
Because the two were crafting the screenplay during the shoot – “we rewrote scenes every morning, we worked though ideas over meals” – the story does not have the structure of a typical Ritchie movie, says Gyllenhaal.
“Guy wanted to do something different in his repertoire and it really excited me,” he adds.
Gyllenhaal plays army sergeant John Kinsey and Dar Salim plays Ahmed, his interpreter in Afghanistan. Their struggles during the war create a lasting bond.
Kinsey goes home, but to his horror, learns that his government has cut ties with people like Ahmed, despite knowing that the Taliban is hunting former interpreters. Rather than wait for the authorities to do something, he decides to take action.
The actor realises that, for Americans especially, the war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 arouses complex feelings that cause them to be unaware of the conflict’s consequences, he says.
He cites figures from the non-profit group No One Left Behind, showing that the Taliban’s campaign of retribution against interpreters and their families has claimed over 300 lives.
Thousands more wait for their former employers, the United States government, to offer them immigrant visas.
Gyllenhaal hopes that the movie will cover the issue in an interesting, relatable way. “This is a story that we hope people will connect with emotionally, in a way that is different from reading about it in the news.”
- The Covenant opens in cinemas on Thursday.
