'The best of us': Jake Gyllenhaal details what makes 'The Covenant' movie a different war film

Meeting Jake Gyllenhaal and Guy Ritchie is enough to make anyone break into a sweat.

That literally happened to Baghdad-born Danish actor Dar Salim, who in Ritchie’s new movie “The Covenant” (in theaters Friday) plays Ahmed, an Afghan interpreter who pushes his own physical limits after Gyllenhaal's U.S. Army Sgt. John Kinley is gravely injured.

Salim’s stoic performance stands to make an impression, ideally better than the one he made on Gyllenhaal and Ritchie when they met at a posh private club in London.

“I’m meeting these huge men of cinema and didn’t want to be nervous, so that morning I took a sauna at my hotel, but I maybe extended the sauna too long,” says Salim, 45, explaining how he began to sweat profusely during the encounter.

Gyllenhaal, 42, cracks up at the memory.

“Within 20 seconds, Dar was Albert Brooks in ‘Broadcast News,’ ” he says, referencing a famous flop-sweat scene in which Brooks’ TV journalist literally melts down on air.

“They were very kind and kept talking,” says Salim. “But I knew in that moment I had lost all credibility, all status as a man and actor ...”

“And also lost potentially all the hydration in his body,” Gyllenhaal jokes. “But he was already chosen for the part, I had no choice, and the poor couch he was sitting on had no choice.”

Guy Ritchie was looking for 'shared humanity' created in wartime

That lighthearted camaraderie helped the actors unwind each day as weeks of filming ground on in the rugged hills of Spain, which doubled for Afghanistan.

“The Covenant” draws its inspiration from the bonds formed between countless U.S. and coalition soldiers and their Middle Eastern interpreters during conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The two sides, while from different worlds, come to rely on each other for information, insights and ultimately their lives. Many interpreters were left behind when military forces suddenly evacuated. In "The Covenant," Gyllenhaal's character decides he owes it to Ahmed to return to Afghanistan on a solo rescue mission.

Ritchie, best known for hyper-action movies such as “The Gentlemen” and “Snatch,” says he wanted to make the film after watching documentaries about the shared humanity that surfaces during wartime across disparate cultures.

“I was interested in, when push comes to shove, what one person is willing to do for another,” he says. “That’s worthy of a film.”

'The Covenant' is about 'the best of us,' Jake Gyllenhaal says

That dynamic is also at the core of a similar movie, 1984’s “The Killing Fields,” the true story of New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, who evacuates from Vietnam, then heads back in an effort to rescue his Cambodian interpreter, Dith Pran. The film poses questions about the nature of war and convenient alliances that turn deadly.

Ritchie says he “recognizes the correlation,” though he had not made the connection. But Gyllenhaal, whose character, John, also returns to the danger zone to help his stranded interpreter, Ahmed, immediately nods when the Roland Joffé film is mentioned.

“That’s a film that was referenced a lot in my family growing up, and when I showed (“The Covenant”) to my mother, she brought it up,” says Gyllenhaal, whose parents were filmmakers and sister is Oscar-nominated actress Maggie Gyllenhaal.

“But our movie is apolitical,” he adds. “The good in us as Americans is what inspires me. It’s the best of us.”

Special forces training helped Jake Gyllenhaal, not so much Dar Salim

Making “The Covenant” challenged Gyllenhaal and Salim physically, especially during the scenes of their arduous mountain escape from Taliban forces.

Tumbling down ravines, carrying heavy loads, being fake shot at all took their toll on the actors' stamina. It helped that Gyllenhaal came to the project with past military movie training, which was supplemented by this film's special ops technical advisers.

"There was no classical boot camp, but I have a lot of friends in the military and have been taught by some of the best," he says.

While Salim had spent part of his youth serving with the Danish Royal Guards, his character “is more self-taught, so he had to hold a gun in ways that are not correct.”

Guy Ritchie surprised actors with a minimal script and maximum improv

There were also creative heights to scale, given that Ritchie provided only a skeleton script and asked his stars to help create the movie as shooting unfolded.

“It was such an inspiring artistic process,” says Gyllenhaal. “We were all around a table exchanging ideas and trying to find this movie together.”

That resulted in small touches such as when Gyllenhaal commented while cameras were rolling that there were a lot of dogs barking near the set. That line stayed in the movie and serves as a connective link between John and Ahmed later in the film.

Ritchie says he’s eager to challenge himself and his cast with less orthodox approaches at this stage in his career. “There are more than one chef, the actors, the director,” he says. “But once you agree how you’ll make this meal, then there’s a consistency.”

For Salim, the improvisational nature of Ritchie’s directing style proved challenging.

“The first few days, it was scary,” he says. “You want to show all your skills, that you belong. And from day one, that’s stripped away. I had to take a few deep breaths and forget all I prepared. I had to trust there was a reason I was there.”

The best part of 'The Covenant'? The director's barbecues

One reason the actors were there was Ritchie’s barbecues. Both Salim and Gyllenhaal wax nostalgic about the sizzling chicken, beef and veggies that their director cooked up daily for cast and crew.

“Spanish wines and tapas are quite good,” Ritchie quips.

“I think the wine and tapas were 35% of it for (Ritchie), and 75% was making the movie, which leads you to 110%,” Gyllenhaal says. “OK, my math skills are off.”

Salim laughs and agrees: “Guy loves being on a film set almost as much as he loves being at home.”

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Jake Gyllenhaal, Guy Ritchie humanize war in 'The Covenant' movie