Rachel (Helen Mirren) fills out a trio of Mossad agents on a kidnapping crusade designed to capture a war criminal two decades after his atrocities.
“The Debt” is a film about sins of the past, committed by both the clear-cut villain and the supposed rectifiers. A remake of an Israeli thriller, it tells of three Mossad agents (Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington) tasked to kidnap and deliver a reviled Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen) in 1960s East Berlin. Things go awry, and the agents tell a major fib, which follows them through life until they mature into Tom Wilkinson, Helen Mirren and Ciarán Hinds. The movie has its moments of grabby intrigue but, not above sin itself, it toggles so as to forbid you from sitting back to enjoy or leaning forward to contemplate.
Shown in flashback, the Holocaust-scarred spy trio shacks up together in a modest flat — a non-boho “Sophie’s Choice” scenario that leads to the inevitable love triangle. Things get more complicated when the ménage à trois becomes a quatre, and the agents bind and gag the wanted Nazi in their living room, taking shifts feeding him in a torturous game of nourish thine enemy. There’s some fascination to the household dynamic, and Christensen has bite, but for a story with such loaded undercurrent, there’s an ocean of psychology left uncharted, both in the Nazi (rendered as a stereotypical monster) and the roommates (largely rendered as stereotypical scorned victims).
The lack of substance doesn’t come with much action-movie consolation, and what diversion is offered takes ages to present itself. Throughout, the photography by Ben Davis (a frequent collaborator of co-writer Matthew Vaughn) is grayed and unsightly, sinking beneath handheld, cold-Euro grittiness into a look that’s simply muddy. Frantic editing aims to ratchet up tension but winds up overwrought, and many shots are suffocatingly caught somewhere between medium and close-up.
What’s left? The answer is Chastain, the sole reason to rush to the film, and officially the most exciting new actress working. Mirren is serviceable as the older version of the same character, but the emotion of “The Debt” is contained in Chastain’s work, which grows more compelling and mysterious with each new movie.
R
Two reels out of four
Now playing in area theaters
PG-13
Available Tuesday
In-demand starlet Saoirse Ronan goes guerrilla as the title character in “Hanna,” Joe Wright’s techno-cool (and considerably weird) assassin fairy tale about a young killer on the run from bureaucrats and on the hunt for her identity. Ronan is terrific, showing shades of transformation not unlike her co-star, Cate Blanchett. Eric Bana also stars, and The Chemical Brothers provide the soundtrack. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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1. Anonymous said... on Sep 2, 2011 at 03:02AM
“remake from 2007”