The Debt

The plot of THE DEBT is rather enigmatic and a bit confusing because of the technique of cutting back and forth between past and present. Added to this is an even more problematic factor: the younger and older counterparts don't look a bit alike, so keeping track of them by character names can keep a viewer in a distracted frame of mind.

Other than the script problems, it must be said that the acting is all on a high level, and the story is particularly engaging during the earlier 1967 sequences. This is partly due to the fact that Rachel (Jessica Chastain) gives the most impressive performance in the film and is someone who immediately involves you in the story. She emerges later on into the Helen Mirren image, which is not quite credible in my opinion. Mirren does a fine job as the mature Rachel and her final scenes with the man she has been hunting down is staged realistically with gut-wrenching violence.

If you can get beyond the casting problems involved, the story is taut with suspense but told at a rather leisurely pace.

Tom Wilkinson and Martin Csokas as old and young Stephan; Ciaran Hinds and Sam Worthington as old and young David; and Jesper Christensen as Dr. Vogel give performances that cannot be praised highly enough. The only drawback is that the resemblance between young and old is entirely missing, a fatal flaw when a film is told in cross-cuts between past and present.

Hunting down an ex-Nazi surgeon who has committed war crimes always makes for an interesting story idea...but in this case, there are too many flaws to make the film wholly successful.

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.

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The Debt has several things going for it: an interesting story and some fine performances. It's a pity that the ending was disappointing.

I'd like to commend Helen Mirren on her performance and even though she gets top billing she's not in it much and when she is her performance doesn't merit the top billing. The stars of the movie are undoubtedly the younger characters played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Martin Csokas for it is with them that the events of 1966 are played out and we get a glimpse of what the trio went through during their mission. Jessica was quite excellent, and demonstrates the stress put on a young and inexperienced agent thrust into East Berlin in the 1960s. Marton, as the leader of the trio, was good and his character was never demanding nor bullying in the way some unit leaders can become. Sam Worthington was competent, and perhaps a little subdued, portraying a shy man with more going on inside his head than he wanted the world to see.

There is a plot twist, which I won't mention, and which was cleverly disguised in the trailers, which provides turns the story on its head and propels the movie towards the end that I found disappointing. If someone waits more than thirty years to develop a guilty conscience, something that was not properly developed for one of the characters, then it makes it difficult to believe that they would go about with their decision in a split second and undo everything they stood for. It made their first early decision to be quite pointless and in the end more damaging to others than for the main characters. Some would argue that the ending was just fine but in movies that's all well and good but in real life it's not as simple as that. So, I felt a little bit let down for a movie that I was very interested in watching.

Is it worth recommending, then? Well, the ending probably won't bother too many people and so it is worth watching as the movie keeps a fine level of tension throughout the movie so you're never to sure which way things are going to go until it occurs.

Greetings again from the darkness. Espionage thrillers can be so much fun in both book and movie form. Movies actually have a little advantage for the action scenes. Books clearly have the advantage in details, backstory and character development. What is frustrating as a viewer is when a movie starts strong and then crumbles under the weight of expectation ... sometimes trying to make a bigger splash than necessary. Such is the case with director John Madden's remake of the rarely-seen 2007 Israeli film "HA-HOV".

The story is centered around a 1965 mission of a trio of Mossad agents. Mossad is Israel's CIA. These three agents, Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) are to capture the notorious Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), and bring him back for a proper trial of war time atrocities.

Flash forward to 1997 and Rachel's daughter has written a book about the daring mission and the three heroes. The older version of the characters are played by Helen Mirren (Rachel), Tom Wilkinson (Stephan) and Ciran Hinds (David). We are treated to flashbacks of the mission and how things took a wrong turn, but ended just fine. Or did they? There seems to be some inconsistencies with the story told and the actual events that have created much strain between Rachel and Stephan, and life-altering changes for the more sensitive David.

This is an odd film because the best story parts occur when the younger cast members are carrying out the 1965 mission. It is full of suspense and intrigue. The intensity and believability drops off significantly in the 1997 version, but oddly, the older actors are much more fun to watch on screen ... especially the great Helen Mirren. I am not sure what all of that really means, but for me, it meant the third act of the film was a bit hokey and hard to buy.

Director John Madden is known for his fabulous "Shakespeare in Love", but not much else. His films since then have all come up just a bit short of that very high bar he set 13 years ago. Jessica Chastain continues her fantastic 2011 season adding this performance to her more spectacular turns in "Tree of Life" and "The Help". Sam Worthington is known for his role in "Avatar", but his character here is so thinly written, I doubt any actor could have pulled it off. Jesper Christensen seems to usually play the bad guy and he is in full glory here as a Nazi war criminal with no regrets.

The first half will keep you on the edge of your seat, but by the end you will have a somewhat empty feeling. What a shame as this one teased us with much hope.

The Debt is a Nazi hunt/spy thriller all rolled into one and it's nice to see a classic thriller that takes the subject matter seriously and relies on suspense to keep us in its grip. I was at the edge of my seat for most of the time and there's plenty of surprising turns in the story to keep even the most jaded enthralled.

Most of todays inept filmmakers rely on blowing stuff up hoping that this will count as suspense. It also is such a breath of fresh air in an appalling year of C -grade superhero movies and obscure comic book adaptations. Hopefully this does well so Hollywood can go back to making well written thrillers and dramas like they used to.

Best suspense thriller of 2011 so far.