The Debt Review

A secret mission resonates across three decades and a nation's identity in The Debt.

By Jordan Hoffman at 3:29 PM
August 23, 2011

http://www.ugo.com/movies/the-debt-review

The Debt Credit: Focus Features

Put aside your personal or political feelings and think about the State of Israel from a screenwriter’s perspective. Here is a nation created out of desperation and determination and sustained, one could argue, on vengeance. The drama’s right there on the surface and every character is given weight, if not by history then at least by hundreds of other movies you’ve seen. For the sake of ease alone, it’s not likely we’ll see a cessation of Nazi hunter flicks any time soon.

This summer brings two from writers Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman. The first, X-Men: First Class, traded in the Mossad for mutants, but the second, The Debt takes a more realistic approach. Cutting between two time periods (the late 1990s and the mid 1960s) the film focuses on three individuals who become national heroes due to their capture of a heinous German war criminal.

Everything set in the 60s is fantastic. Jessica Chastain plays a noble agent on her first assignment, willing to expose herself, quite literally, to indignity for the good of her country. Her quarry is a Josef Mengele-type character living as a gynecologist in East Berlin. There are three tension-filled scenes in stirrups and to hear actor Jesper Christensen snarl the world “speculum” in German ranks as one of the creepiest moments on film this year.

Chastain is teamed with Sam Worthington and the terrific Marton Csokas (Celeborn from Lord of the Rings), and the scenes of them plotting their abduction is as tasty as any Cold War caper picture. Things go wrong, of course, and this is where The Debt really gets cookin’. Tension mounts as the three Israelis and “The Butcher of Birkenau” stay holed up in a leaky garret awaiting instruction. Individuals pinned-down by the madness of political belligerence is usually the realm of foreign language films (see Bruno Barreto’s Four Days in September, Koji Wakamatsu’s United Red Army or Danis Tanovic’s No Man’s Land just for a start) so it’s great to see some familiar red carpet faces in the scenario.

More boldfaced names come in the “modern” part of the story in the form of Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds. Without giving away spoilers, let’s just say that the events of the mid-1960s have a lasting legacy that must be dealt with by our characters well into their Autumn years.

Despite the best efforts of the performers, it is impossible for the events of the second part of the story to have the same oomph as the first. Add to this director John Madden’s none-to-subtle visual cues (yes, we know children are the future) and the use of echo-y “remembered thoughts” and you’ve got something teetering on the edge of being hokey. When Helen Mirren gets in a fight to the death that isn’t done for grindhouse cheering like in RED I can’t deny that I chuckled a little bit. The flashes back and forward feel more like a book than a movie – and by the end of the affair, I admit, I was a little bit exhausted.

So The Debt, much like the State of Israel, has some existential problems. So much of it is good, however, that it is easy to ignore some misguided steps.