The Debt

I remember watching the trailer for The Debt last year. Then, it vanished without a trace. About two months ago, it resurfaced. When a distributor pulls a movie and then releases it a year later, that is usually not a good sign. Yet, with the director of Shakespeare in Love at the helm, and Helen Mirren in the starring role, you would have to expect at least a decent film. So, I entered The Debt with low to moderate expectations.

The Debt tells the story of Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Morton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington), three Mossad agents who are given the task of locating and extracting a Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogol (Jesper Christensen) from Germany in 1967. Vogol is wanted by the Israelis for all the medical testing he performed on Jews in the concentration camps during the war. The trio works out a plan using the Berlin Wall, a train, an ambulance and bolt cutters. The spy portion of the story is inventive, even suspenseful. Of course, the plan does not go smoothly. This leads to the major plot twist, that I do not think anyone saw coming. That both helps and hurts the movie. After the twist, however, the movie begins to fall apart.

The Debt also tells the story of the extraction’s aftermath in 1997. Sara (Romi Aboulafia), daughter of Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) who are now divorced, has written a book based on this now famous mission. The twist I mentioned above causes the now aged agents to take action to prevent some sensitive information from being exposed.

The acting is solid from the entire cast. Ciaran Hinds is under-utilized as the older version of David. He is a tremendous actor with plenty of great roles and films on his resume. I am shocked that he is barely even seen on screen and has even fewer lines. This seems to be the year of Jessica Chastain. She has already appeared in Tree of Life and The Help. She still has Coriolanus, Take Shelter and Texas Killing Fields left to come out this year.  Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Sam Worthington put in solid performances. The real star of The Debt though is Jesper Christensen. His creepy, disturbed and captivating performance as the viscous doctor really made my skin crawl at times.

The Debt tells its story in a series of flashbacks, flashforwards, and more flashbacks. It could have been very confusing and hard to follow, but having different actors playing the same characters at different ages, helped to keep the timeline straight and easy to follow. The Debt struggles immensely in its story after the late twist. The last twenty minutes lack suspense, and the final scene had little-to-no emotional impact. If it weren’t for the lackluster ending, The Debt could have been a decent spy-espionage thriller. Unfortunately, it falls flat on its face. It met my middle of the road expectations, but nothing more. If you have nothing else going on this holiday weekend, The Debt is not the worst way to spend money. If it gets as hot as it is supposed to, at least the theater is air conditioned.

RATING: 6/10