Movie Review: "The Debt"

Caveat: I couldn't help comparing Helen Mirren's performance here with her turn in 2010's "Red" (which I loved).  Although the butt-kicking was a little more obvious in last year's flick, Mirren turns in another fine performance in "The Debt," and once more I declare that I want to be Helen Mirren when I grow up.  No, really!  She just gets more splendid and more gorgeous with age.  She's 66 and utterly magical while effortlessly running rings around the latest undifferentiated crop of Hollywood starlets.  She's worth countless numbers of those vapid creatures. You want class and talent and a core of steel?  You look at Dame Helen Mirren.  She's also worth countless numbers of self-proclaimed feminists too, while I'm at it.  And -- yes -- I pretty much decided to go see "The Debt" just on the knowledge that she was in it.  I didn't really know that much about the plot other than it was an espionage thriller set in two time frames and involved East Berlin.  OK, I said, who's in the cast?  A lot of people, actually ... and Helen Mirren.  Did you say Helen Mirren?  *grabs purse and heads out the door*

Since I did label this post a "movie review" and not a "panegyric to Helen," I suppose I should get on with it.  "The Debt" is indeed a thriller constructed with a premise of the past catching up with the present as 3 Mossad operatives face in 1997 what they did 30 years past in East Berlin as they hunted Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (a sadist who had engaged in human vivisection, chillingly played by Jesper Christiansen, and clearly modeled on Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death").  



The movie shunts back and forth between the action in 1966 East Berlin and 1997 as two sets of actors play 1 set of characters: Rachel Singer, played in her youth by Jessica Chastain and then by Helen Mirren; Stephan Gold, played by Marton Csokas and Tom Wilkinson; and David Peretz, played by Sam Worthington and Ciaran Hinds.  I'll try to give too many twists and turns away, but the plot revolves around the three young Israelis' mission to capture Vogel and take him to trial in Israel.  The mission does not unfold as planned, and the ensuing complications and consequences drive both plot and characterization.

I have to say that the action set in East Berlin was better than its 1997 counterpart.  The claustrophobic scenes in the 3 agents' tiny, dingy apartment become their intangible  fears and nerves mapped onto physical space; when the roof leaks in multiple spots during a rainstorm, the constant drip-drip-drip of water is the reflection of the erosive -- indeed corrosive -- effects of the mission's stresses.  The young cast is impressive.  Sam Worthington, so badly used in his other film appearances (*cough* Terminator! *cough* Avatar! *cough*), demonstrates the talent his previous projects did not allow him to use.  Marton Csokas (you might recognize him as Celeborn from the "Lord of the Rings" movies) possesses a pressurized charisma that his older self in Tom Wilkinson (rather miscast) never manages to capture.  The real surprise to me was Jessica Chastain, managing to embody both vulnerability and toughness and a compelling mix of courage and apprehension.

In the end, I thought the ending of the movie was lacking and that it should have been less ... obvious, I suppose.  All the same, "The Debt" is most definitely worth your time as it meditates on a mission that both went wrong and never truly went away even after it was over.

MM gives "The Debt" a solid B.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Fresh rating of 76%.

"The Debt" runs 1 hour 44 minutes and is rated R for violence.