The Debt

In John Madden's The Debt, three young strangers in 1965 East Berlin seek to find and capture The Surgeon of Birkenau, a ruthless doctor that performed horrific acts on imprisoned Jews during World War II.

The threesome are played by Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas and Jessica Chastain who embody David, Stefan and Rachel respectively in their younger years. Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson and Helen Mirren play the characters when the film switches between the 1960's to the end of 1999.

The film flips between the thirty year time frame liberally in the first third of the film. We watch as the young David, Stefan and Rachel welcome us to 'The Mission' and follow them through the intricate plot details that, if all goes correctly, will bring the doctor to across the Berlin wall to face trial for his actions. Young Rachel will pose as a patient to gain access to the doctor and when confirmation is received, she will use her special training to subdue the surgeon so that Stefan and David can transport him alive to West Berlin and then back to Israel.

But things don't go according to plan and soon the three are forced to remain in hiding with their prisoner until they can determine a new course of action. It's while cooped up in their apartment that the doctor begins to use mind games in an effort to gain the psychological advantage while revealing the true evil behind his words.

In more modern times, we learn that Rachel and Stefan had both married and divorced. Their daughter has written a book about the abduction and the days that followed in the apartment detailing her parents as heroes to the cause.

But recent developments and an unexpected suicide by David leave Stefan and Rachel in the same position they were 30 years ago. And one must travel back to Europe to seek out someone who claims to be the original Surgeon of Birkenau.

John Madden is no stranger to award winning dramas. Shakespeare in Love won out over Saving Private Ryan and Ethan Frome was a well received romance back in 1993. Madden works the camera like a maestro in effortlessly weeding the story through multiple decades. The film never loses focus and relies on its strengths – namely the performances of Mirren, Csokas and Chastain – to carry the heavy plot line forward.

However, in the final acts, the story gets a little lost. Watching Mirren head to Kiev, Ukraine was a leap of faith and political, social and moral values begin to choke the life out of what was a better than average thriller up to that point.

With the conclusion of The Debt being too heavy handed to maintain the thin weight of the first ¾, The Debt eventually fails to be the film that showed award promise in the trailers. We are not suggesting that The Debt is a bad film, but its final reel wilt does take away from the execution of its predecessors.

Mirren may still get award recognition come December (the film is officially released December 29th), but it may be a long shot to see The Debt as one of the Best Picture nominees.

www.killerreviews.com

This espionage thriller is an English-language version of a 2007 Israeli film "Ha-Hov" and it is immediately apparent why an adaptation that will inevitably win a much larger audience was made. This is a gripping tale, intelligently told and cleverly constructed. It is much more exiting than the other spy movie of the summer of 2011 "Tinker Tailor Solider Spy" and a much more authentic representation of the Israeli secret service Mossad than "Munich".

Essentially we have two stories here, set in different times (1965 and 1997) and different locations (Berlin and Israel/Ukraine) but involving the same characters; yet director John Madden - whose first success was the contrasting "Shakespeare In Love" - has done a skillful job in interweaving the two narratives in a manner which requires the viewer to re-evaluate regularly both situations and motivations. The early period works better than the later one and fortunately it accounts for the majority of the film, but this is almost two hours of sustained tension.

Unusually there are seven strong roles in one film. The three Mossad agents Stephan, David and Rachel are played by Marton Csokas, Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain respectively in the Cold War period and portrayed by Tom Wilkinson, Ciarán Hinds and Helen Mirren respectively in the modern day setting, while the Danish Jesper Christensen is the surgeon of Birkenau throughout the story and gives this profoundly unsympathetic role a subtle psychological dimension.

Although most of these roles are male, it is the two female performances that are especially memorable. Mirren has had a brilliant career and it is wonderful to see her at the top of her game in her sixties, while Chastain seems to have suddenly burst into movies with "The Tree Of Live" and clearly has a major career ahead of her.

Surely the older (recent) male actors were around the wrong way? Confused the hell out of me.

A plodding plot, dull dialogue and cardboard characters made this a boring evening. Does Mossad really recruit self-obsessed inadequates from soap operas? The film starts with a confusing series of action sequences posing unanswered questions, which I found irritating. It then proceeds to an over-long and pedantic account of the bungled kidnapping of a Nazi war criminal, who is the standard stock Nazi. At least the same cannot be said of the Mossad agents, who would be more at home in Eastenders - emotional turmoil and histrionics prevail and the situation deteriorates into total catastrophe.

However have to say that my wife liked it!

A remake of the 2007 Israeli film of the same name, John Madden's Westernised take on the gritty espionage thriller is enjoyably diverting, if not much more. Tracking three Mossad agents across two timeframes – as young adults they embark on a perilous mission to capture a serial killing Nazi surgeon, 30 years later they revisit their haunted memories – there's plenty going on story-wise. However it lacks that required edge to elevate it into spellbinding territory, largely due to the uninspiring way it's shot and presented. The impressive line-up of actors don't disappoint; Martin Csokas, Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain gel naturally as the inexperienced spies, whilst Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds and Helen Mirren add enormous clout as their elderly counterparts. Could've been better, could've been worse; a mixed affair really.