Title: The Debt

Opens: August 31, 2011

Since most movies reflect current times, we often hear that a film is “torn from today’s headlines.” Think of Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” released when some in the U.S. were seriously considering reforming its health care system. Could the same be true of John Madden’s (“Shakespeare in Love”) “The Debt?” After all it takes place in 1997 and in 1965, so what’s current? Well, just look at the latest atrocity committed by cowardly terrorists who sneaked into southern Israel and killed seven, wounding another forty. Any movie that in some way reflects on the miseries inflicted upon the Jewish people has resonance: “The Debt” is torn from today’s headlines if any journalist chooses to deepen a story of a current atrocity by illustrating the broad background surrounding Israel’s vulnerability today.

“The Debt” is a remake of the Israeli film “Ha-Hov” (“The Debt”) using actors who speak principally English with some German and Ukrainian thrown in to afford a semblance of authenticity. While German subjects speak German for the most part, using English only when language matters to a particular scene, “The Debt” suffers from the lack of credibility when the characters, most of whom are living in Israel, speak not Hebrew but English. Yet the implication is that before they immigrated to the Land of Milk and Honey they were from a part of Europe that did not speak that tongue. This is unfortunate: “The Debt” is an original, proving once again that a post-Holocaust drama need not run through the same old formula. Also preventing the top rating that the film might have deserved is the promiscuity in which director Madden switches from 1965 to 1997, back and forth so many times that the techniques serves more to confuse the audience than to ratchet up the already considerable tension.

The story is based on the attempt by Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, to capture a vicious Nazi doctor who killed thousands in Poland’s Birkenau concentration camp. He tortured most, blinding many to see whether he could create human beings with different eye colors, even severing and transplanting limbs to find ways to perform such surgery in the future. The three Mossad agents are: Jessica Chastain in the role of the young Rachel Singer, who morphs into the older Helen Mirren; Marton Csokas as the hotheaded Stefan in 1965 and Tom Wilkinson as that fellow in ’97; and Sam Worthington as young David, a role taken over decades later by Tom Wilkinson. Throw in Jesper Christensen as both the younger and the older Nazi doctor Dieter Vogel, and you have an outstanding cast to work its way through this complex plot.

POSSIBLE SPOILER:The tale, which unfolds in Tel Aviv in more current times and East Berlin (filmed in Hungary) back then, is an Eichmann-style plot about capturing the notorious Nazi whose identity reminds us strongly of Dr. Mengele, smuggling him into Israel for trial “so all could see what he did.” The real subject, however, is the lie that the agents lived and suffered with for over thirty years, a grievous debt that they had been unwilling to pay to their country. Their captive is successfully kidnapped from his East Berlin office where he is practicing gynecology under a different name, but somehow the trio of Mossad agents mess up badly. They are unable to complete the mission, and on top of that failure, allow the doctor to get away while lying to the Israeli government, insisting that he was shot and disposed of in an escape attempt.

Not only is Mossad dragged across the coals for its utter failure, besmirching that agency’s reputation as invincible, but in addition, the twenty-five year old Rachel Singer, who falls in love with David—her pretended husband—lets her passion carry her away by indulging in an affair with both of her fellow agents, leading to a physically violent dissension in the male ranks.

Jessica Chastain, who reminds me of Natalie Portman, is the woman to watch as she uses her black-belt skills in practice with her two accomplices and against the Nazi, while Helen Mirren, who can do no wrong, illuminates the screen as the older Rachel Singer, as terrified as her accomplices of having the big lie exposed and of the terminal humiliation that this would cause. Jesper Christensen is remarkable as the wily, vicious, anti-Semite who taunts his captors by saying “You Jews know how to be killed but not to kill.” Apparently he has not kept up with the news signalling Israel’s bravery in winning two major wars though heavily outnumbered, soon destined to show the world what Jews can do in just six days.

Rated R. 113 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – B+