User Reviews

In 1965, the Mossad agents Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) are assigned to kidnap the Nazi Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), a.k.a. The Surgeon of Birkenau, in East Berlin. They succeed in the abduction but fail in bringing him to the west side. While staying with him in an apartment building, Vogel escapes but the trio of young agents lies to their government and tells that Rachel killed Vogel while he was running away. They have been honored in their country by their action for more than thirty years.

In 1997, Rachel's daughter Sarah Gold (Romi Aboulafia) releases a book in Tel Aviv about the mission of her mother and the two other agents. Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren), Sarah's father Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson), who is paralytic, and David Peretz (Ciarán Hinds), who is missing, are retired and Rachel is uncomfortable with the lie that they have been living with.

Out of the blue, David appears in Tel Aviv and commits suicide. Stephan investigates and finds that Dieter Vogel is apparently alive in a hospital in Kiev, Ukraine, and will be interviewed by a journalist. Now Rachel has to travel to Kiev to conclude what they should have done thirty years ago.

"The Debt" is an engaging espionage thriller with good story and development of characters, great screenplay, acting and direction but a disappointing conclusion. There are flaws, but final redemption of Rachel is unjustifiable for a person that has lived with a lie for more than thirty years and whose decision would not affect only her life, but the lives of her daughter, her former partner and mainly people of her nation who had believed on their words. Sometimes a lie may be useful and that was the case. Her decision will certainly only bring pain and nothing else. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "No Limite da Mentira" ("In the Limit of the Lie")

The first hour of The Debt suggested that this movie was going to be another Manichean moral tale with the good Mossad agents tracking down the evil Nazi so that he could be brought to justice. The tone and quality were reminiscent of something from Lifetime TV channel. It seemed overly heavy and super serious and more educational than entertaining. Which is not to say that movies relating to the Holocaust and its aftermath should be a barrel of laughs. (I, for one, found Life is Beautiful to be highly distasteful and inappropriate.)

Because this movie was so slow moving, I actually saved the second half for the following night. That's already a red flag: not a fast-paced suspense thriller. In fact, The Debt does not really become a thriller until the second half of the film, when it finally emerges that what we really have here is an essay on truth and lies. The dominant theme becomes an examination of what the fear of sullying one's reputation can drive one to do. At this juncture, the potential for something wonderful and profound suddenly comes into view. I was fully prepared to forgive and forget the plodding opening in anticipation of what was yet to come.

Unfortunately, the final quarter of the movie takes a turn for the worse, descending ultimately into something close to a slasher genre film. A senescent slasher genre film, to be more precise, given the advanced age of the protagonists. Really, the gore is completely overdone and the circumstances which conspire to make the gore possible are utterly preposterous.

The primary positive take away from this production was that it did not fulfill its initial Manichean promise, thankfully. The human-all-too-human quality of Mossad agents and Nazis alike is highlighted rather than the childish "We are good, and they are evil" trope, of which I, for one, have had quite enough.

A couple of final technical gripes: Jessica Chastain's accent was annoying, and as far as I know microformat cameras did not exist in the 1960s. Did they plug that little SIM-card-sized device into a laptop computer to retrieve the necessary data? Don't think so.

The fine performances of the entire cast of "The Debt" are my only reason for giving this film six stars. The story had good potential as a post-Holocaust and World War II thriller. But its very subject -- an operation by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, is what loses credit for the film. That's because of the several failings of the agents in the operation. It wasn't long into the film when my attention was drawn more to the mistakes of the expertly trained agents, than to the mission itself and the intrigue surrounding it. So, I soon found myself watching for the next mistake instead of being engrossed in the story itself. I don't think that's what the filmmakers want of any audience. But, I suspect this may have been true for any number of other viewers as well, judging from some of the reviews I've read.

While any covert operation is bound to run into a glitch here or there, I don't know of any true events that have had so many glitches. This movie of course, is fiction. But consider some of the real covert operations that have succeeded for Israel. On May 11, 1960, Mossad agents abducted Nazi Adolf Eichmann from Argentina where he had been in hiding since 1950. He was tried in Israel for his leadership in the Holocaust and was hanged in 1962. Numerous other operations by the Israeli intelligence network have occurred in many countries. And, on July 4, 1976, Israeli intelligence and the military planned and carried out a huge counter- terrorist effort. Operation Thunderbolt was the name of the Israeli commando raid on the Entebbe International Airport in Uganda. That raid covered more than 2,500 miles to free the remaining hostages of an Air France flight that had been hijacked. It took just one week to plan and carry out the raid. A TV movie was made on that operation in 1976 -- "Raid on Entebbe."

So, in "The Debt" we have a fictitious operation carried out by three agents in 1965. Mossad was established in 1947, and its agents were highly trained and expert in all aspects of covert operations. Indeed, the movie shows their hand-to-hand combat skills early. Only one of the agents – Stephan Gold (played by Tom Wilkinson and Marton Csokas) appears to be fully competent though. But even he fails to make sure that Dieter Vogel is completely secured when they begin their escape. Had Vogel not been able to honk the horn in the van and draw the attention of the East German guards, the abduction-escape looked like it would work.

The young Rachel Singer and David Perez made mistake after mistake. They violated training and listened and reacted to the talk of their prisoner, Vogel. In both instances, it led to serious errors on their part. But, even after those errors, they didn't recover. In the first instance, David doesn't think to clean up broken pieces of a dish that could be used to cut ropes – as Vogel indeed used a piece of broken glass to get free and then to attack Rachel. Rachel also failed to clean up the entire mess herself. And, when she saw that Vogel had gotten free, she walked into the room where she could be attacked from behind. She didn't alert her fellow agents first. She didn't pull her gun, and approach the room by checking each side. She just walked ahead with a dumb-founded look of disbelief that the prisoner wasn't still tied up where he was. Is there a single viewer of this film who didn't know she would be attacked from behind?

Now, I credit the actors with very good performances. But, the script and direction that had these agents act like such stumble-bums is a very poor characterization of what may be the world's most competently trained and able covert agents. But, even with Rachel's seeming lack of security and pursuit training, she seemed to be able to take down her two male agents, both much bigger men and close to her age. She showed that ability again when she was able to subdue Vogel in his doctor's office. She was 25 and he was close to 60. But, he defeats her after he escapes following a heavy beating by David. And then, at the film's end, the once again alert but not alert Rachel is taken down by Vogel. Only this time, she's 57 years old and he is over 90 years old. So much for her abilities.

Other aspects of this film – wrestling with truth, selfishness versus concern for others, etc. get convoluted and don't find any resolution. So, the ending is probably right on. We don't know if Rachel lives to see her daughter shamed or not. But, she has taken the steps to see that that will happen. And then there is the tough David who was so bent on justice for one of the Nazi henchmen who contributed to the killing of his whole family. He is so hurt in conscience by the travail of their failed mission after 30 years, and the thought that nobody else knows the truth, that he has to step in front of a truck to end his own life of misery. Maybe this film is more about pride than anything else. That would explain why the agents would lie – to cover up their incompetency. Instead of for the good of all Israel – as Stephan argued. This movie might have one redeeming value. It could be used as a training film for new recruits and old hands in the security and intelligence fields. It shows what not to do, and what happens when one doesn't follow his or her training.

I have a feeling The Debt was made with an older demographic in mind which is great. I went into this completely blind, having no idea what it was, although I did remember seeing a trailer a long time ago. I suppose it could be considered action but also a drama. The story unfolds definitely slowly. I found the pace too slow at times which dragged down the story just a little bit. Even still the performances of the movie and the story itself makes it interesting and entertaining enough.

Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds play the older characters and all do a solid job. I always find Wilkinson kind of dry but Mirren and Hinds boost the cast enough that all three of them do well. Their younger selves are played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington. Chastain is excellent, she is probably the highlight of the time and it is believable that she is Mirren later in life. The same cannot be said for Csokas, and Worthington. They simply are not believable that these two men became Wilkinson and Hinds. But on their own they do a decent job. Both pairs of men as younger and older characters are sort of dry throughout. Jesper Christensen is excellent as the evil Doctor that plagues them throughout their careers. He gives a worthy performance.

Director John Madden is a very English director, having directed a handful of well received films. I say that he's very English because even the style of the film is distinctly English. The content and pacing is always just a little bit different in an English film and The Debt has that distinct feel. I suppose it sort of combined action with drama but was heavier on the drama side. It is worth seeing, some might really really enjoy it but be warned that the pace is a little slow and some of the performances a little dry. Regardless it is worth checking out for something interesting. 7/10

The beginning of this movie is extremely strong. We see three hesitant young people stepping out of a cargo plane at an Israeli airport. 'Take a deep breath', says one of them. It's as if he is warning the audience for what comes next. In the first 20 minutes of the movie, we see a gala event where a proud daughter presents a book about her clearly uneasy mother, a flashback showing an intriguing fight with a man getting killed and a woman hurt, and a very spectacular suicide.

We know the events are connected. The girl emerging from the cargo plane has a bandage on her right cheek, the uneasy mother has a scar at the same place and the woman in the flashback has wounds on the right side of her face. The script also gives us clues: the daughter tells about her mother being 25, and the flashback is a chapter from the book she has written, read by her mother at the gala event.

Sounds complicated? It is. The movie starts by giving the audience story elements that fit together when the film evolves. It's about three Mossad agents trying to kidnap a war criminal in East-Berlin, but failing to do so. A large part of the movie shows the goings-on in Berlin, where the three agents are in constant fear of being discovered. The war criminal, who is being held captive in their apartment, plays cruel psychological games with the three of them. The triangular relationship between the three agents complicates matters even more. This part of the movie is very good, and ends with the fight we have seen at the start. But here, the movie takes a surprising twist.

I found the last part of the film, which is set in the present, less convincing. It gives star actress Helen Mirren more screen time, but could just as well have been a short epilogue of a few minutes. This part has some improbable twists. And in spite of Mirren's star power, I found her performance less impressive than the one by the talented and beautiful Jessica Chastain, who is the central character in the Belin part.

In spite of all this, I very much enjoyed watching The Debt. It's a well made espionage thriller, with some exciting scenes, and an intelligent script with some nice surprises. The performances by Chastain and Mirren are extra reasons to go watch this movie.

'The Truth' or 'The Truth That Needs To Be Said'? this is one of the dilemmas facing the heroes of 'The Debt', which is quite an exotic entry in the list of films made by John Madden, the exoticism being that it's well closer to the pattern of routine Hollywood thrillers than movies like Shakespeare in Love or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

There are however a few reasons that make this film interesting, even if you are not necessarily a fan of Mossad action movies processed by the American commercial cinema filters. This is the story of an unfinished business which involves a team of Israeli idealistic young agents of Mossad trying to capture in the 60s one of the notorious war criminals modeled on the image of 'doctor' Mengele. Their mission takes them in no other place than East Berlin in the days of the Cold War, and when things go wrong they have to make extreme choices - not only about life and death, but also about absolute and convenient truth. The story alternates between the 60s and the 90s, which opens another kind of question mark about whether big mistakes can ever be fixed. Of course they can, it's Hollywood stuff after all. This does not necessarily result in a great movie.

While the premises are interesting the execution is far from brilliant. Director Madden brings nothing new in a genre that had so many successes and even more failures, beyond quite a rigorous and detailed rendition of the East Berlin atmosphere. The biggest failure is however in the way he directs the characters of his Israeli heroes. They behave and talk like no Israeli, and even the setting of the scenes supposed to take place in Israel in Israeli location does not help. The approach is superficial and does not go too deep beyond the crust of the characters, and this crust does not seem genuine at all. I love Helen Mirren, she is best as queens or chief-detective roles, and I found even her acting as a retired agent in the RED series to be delicious. Here she undertakes another retired agent role, and I am sorry to say, she is not at her best. At the end of the screening I remained with the feeling that the makers of this film still have some 'Debt' to their viewers.

I knew almost nothing about this film other than it had some good buzz and Helen Mirren was in it. No idea of the plot, setting, etc., which is rare, so I went in about as blindly as one can.

The Debt, in case you are as ill-informed as I, is about a trio of Israeli agents in the mid-60s who infiltrate East Berlin to track down a former Nazi concentration camp doctor and bring him to justice. The team consists of Stephen (the great Marton Csokas), David (Sam Worthington), and Rachel (Jessica Chastain), and they have their own inner tensions – there's a semi-love triangle, David is overly secretive, and so on. Interspersed with this plot are scenes where the three of them are older (and except for Rachel, look totally different), looking back on the incident, as Rachel's daughter has written a book about it (older Rachel is, of course, Mirren).

Sometimes this kind of crosscutting works in a film, but here it is somewhat confusing because older David (Ciaran Hinds) and older Stephen (Tom Wilkinson) look nothing like their younger counterparts, so you have to sort of play 'who's who' for a while until it sorts itself out. Also, they seem to show you the climax of the 60s plot in the beginning, so some of the tension seems to be missing from that thread… until the big twist in the middle of the film, which catapults the action into the modern day. This is where the movie really grinds to a crawl; the older counterparts are so different from their younger versions that it's almost like starting a second movie an hour and ten minutes in. I had a hard time caring about the older characters, and they dominate completely the last third of the film.

Mirren of course is good, and Hinds plays older David with a wonderfully haunted mien (he's not in the movie enough to make any deeper impression). All three of the young leads are excellent –Worthington can sometimes come off as flat, but here he underplays David, and he's excellent (his final scene with Rachel is subtle and exceptional). Chastain, whom I'm not familiar with, is stellar here; we bond with Rachel instantly, and she's an intriguing character. Obviously I like Csokas and he's in his comfort zone here, playing a confident, intelligent prick, but he's magnetic.

It's probably because the young leads are so good that the older ones come off so dull and unappealing (even Mirren), and frankly the storyline in the present day (well, the late 90s, their present day) seems trite and silly next to the danger of East Berlin and an ex-Nazi gynecologist. That shift, which may have worked well in a novel (or perhaps in the original Israeli version of the movie), stops the film dead in its tracks, and while we're following the present, flashbacks to the past only drag down the current action more. It's a risky proposition to split a plot between younger and older versions of characters anyway, though it's been done well elsewhere; but here the schism is too jarring, too great to be overcome, and you're left wishing they would have just stayed in the Sixties when the movie was interesting.

Overall it's a mediocre film, with some parts very well done and others irritatingly flat. Had the present day plot line been anywhere near as compelling, this would have been a standout film; as it is, it's a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Some parts are definitely worth a look, but the parts don't add up to a satisfying whole, and with the talent involved, I can't shake the nagging feeling they should have.