Review of The Debt (2010) by Jake W — 19 Feb 2012

The Debt belongs to a dwindling group of old school thrillers and is a fresh change for 3D orientated super hero non-sense that Hollywood seems to churn out with seemingly endless enthusiasm nowadays.

The fictional story about three Israeli Mossad agents set out to bring a notorious Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel aka "The Surgeon of Birkenau" to justice instantly amps up the interest towards the movie. The main characters going after the dreaded Nazi criminal are Mossad agents Rachel (Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren), Stephan (Marton Csokas and Tom Wilkinson) and David (Sam Worthingon and Ciaran Hinds). Obvious from the actor list, the movie is divided in half with part of the movie spent with younger actors in 1960's Berlin and the other half with their older characters going through the aftermath of their mission in present day. The story and history aspect of the movie prove to be very interesting, I found especially the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad) to be a fascinating subject. Being the equivalent to USA agencies of FBI and CIA, Mossad is known in real life for its ruthless enthusiasm to execute shady cover operations which involve assassinations, counter intelligence and kidnapping and bringing Nazi war criminals to justice among other things.

No matter how fascinating the subject and the background the movie has, sadly they prove to be more interesting than the movie itself. I found the younger version actors of the three main characters rather superficial and the love triangle set between them seemed forced. Additionally the movie tries very hard to create suspension without never really getting there. Luckily for the movie, the elder counterparts fare much better but unfortunately most part of the movie is spent with the younger characters. Interestingly and perhaps bit unethically Jesper Christensen as Dieter Vogel aka "The Surgeon of Birkenau" was the most interesting and well played character of the film. Loosely based on the most renown Nazi criminal of them all, Josef Mengele aka the Angel of Death, Jesper Christensen brings out his devious and manipulative character in a impressive way.

The Debt is not a particularly bad film, but the fact that the history aspect of the film proved to be more interesting than better part of the movie (with younger actors) hinders is.