User reviews

A remake of the 2007 Israeli film of the same name, John Madden's Westernised take on the gritty espionage thriller is enjoyably diverting, if not much more. Tracking three Mossad agents across two timeframes – as young adults they embark on a perilous mission to capture a serial killing Nazi surgeon, 30 years later they revisit their haunted memories – there's plenty going on story-wise. However it lacks that required edge to elevate it into spellbinding territory, largely due to the uninspiring way it's shot and presented. The impressive line-up of actors don't disappoint; Martin Csokas, Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain gel naturally as the inexperienced spies, whilst Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds and Helen Mirren add enormous clout as their elderly counterparts. Could've been better, could've been worse; a mixed affair really.

Greetings again from the darkness. Espionage thrillers can be so much fun in both book and movie form. Movies actually have a little advantage for the action scenes. Books clearly have the advantage in details, backstory and character development. What is frustrating as a viewer is when a movie starts strong and then crumbles under the weight of expectation ... sometimes trying to make a bigger splash than necessary. Such is the case with director John Madden's remake of the rarely-seen 2007 Israeli film "HA-HOV".

The story is centered around a 1965 mission of a trio of Mossad agents. Mossad is Israel's CIA. These three agents, Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) are to capture the notorious Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), and bring him back for a proper trial of war time atrocities.

Flash forward to 1997 and Rachel's daughter has written a book about the daring mission and the three heroes. The older version of the characters are played by Helen Mirren (Rachel), Tom Wilkinson (Stephan) and Ciran Hinds (David). We are treated to flashbacks of the mission and how things took a wrong turn, but ended just fine. Or did they? There seems to be some inconsistencies with the story told and the actual events that have created much strain between Rachel and Stephan, and life-altering changes for the more sensitive David.

This is an odd film because the best story parts occur when the younger cast members are carrying out the 1965 mission. It is full of suspense and intrigue. The intensity and believability drops off significantly in the 1997 version, but oddly, the older actors are much more fun to watch on screen ... especially the great Helen Mirren. I am not sure what all of that really means, but for me, it meant the third act of the film was a bit hokey and hard to buy.

Director John Madden is known for his fabulous "Shakespeare in Love", but not much else. His films since then have all come up just a bit short of that very high bar he set 13 years ago. Jessica Chastain continues her fantastic 2011 season adding this performance to her more spectacular turns in "Tree of Life" and "The Help". Sam Worthington is known for his role in "Avatar", but his character here is so thinly written, I doubt any actor could have pulled it off. Jesper Christensen seems to usually play the bad guy and he is in full glory here as a Nazi war criminal with no regrets.

The first half will keep you on the edge of your seat, but by the end you will have a somewhat empty feeling. What a shame as this one teased us with much hope.

Surely the older (recent) male actors were around the wrong way? Confused the hell out of me.

The Debt is a Nazi hunt/spy thriller all rolled into one and it's nice to see a classic thriller that takes the subject matter seriously and relies on suspense to keep us in its grip. I was at the edge of my seat for most of the time and there's plenty of surprising turns in the story to keep even the most jaded enthralled.

Most of todays inept filmmakers rely on blowing stuff up hoping that this will count as suspense. It also is such a breath of fresh air in an appalling year of C -grade superhero movies and obscure comic book adaptations. Hopefully this does well so Hollywood can go back to making well written thrillers and dramas like they used to.

Best suspense thriller of 2011 so far.

The plot of THE DEBT is rather enigmatic and a bit confusing because of the technique of cutting back and forth between past and present. Added to this is an even more problematic factor: the younger and older counterparts don't look a bit alike, so keeping track of them by character names can keep a viewer in a distracted frame of mind.

Other than the script problems, it must be said that the acting is all on a high level, and the story is particularly engaging during the earlier 1967 sequences. This is partly due to the fact that Rachel (Jessica Chastain) gives the most impressive performance in the film and is someone who immediately involves you in the story. She emerges later on into the Helen Mirren image, which is not quite credible in my opinion. Mirren does a fine job as the mature Rachel and her final scenes with the man she has been hunting down is staged realistically with gut-wrenching violence.

If you can get beyond the casting problems involved, the story is taut with suspense but told at a rather leisurely pace.

Tom Wilkinson and Martin Csokas as old and young Stephan; Ciaran Hinds and Sam Worthington as old and young David; and Jesper Christensen as Dr. Vogel give performances that cannot be praised highly enough. The only drawback is that the resemblance between young and old is entirely missing, a fatal flaw when a film is told in cross-cuts between past and present.

Hunting down an ex-Nazi surgeon who has committed war crimes always makes for an interesting story idea...but in this case, there are too many flaws to make the film wholly successful.

In John Madden's The Debt, three young strangers in 1965 East Berlin seek to find and capture The Surgeon of Birkenau, a ruthless doctor that performed horrific acts on imprisoned Jews during World War II.

The threesome are played by Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas and Jessica Chastain who embody David, Stefan and Rachel respectively in their younger years. Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson and Helen Mirren play the characters when the film switches between the 1960's to the end of 1999.

The film flips between the thirty year time frame liberally in the first third of the film. We watch as the young David, Stefan and Rachel welcome us to 'The Mission' and follow them through the intricate plot details that, if all goes correctly, will bring the doctor to across the Berlin wall to face trial for his actions. Young Rachel will pose as a patient to gain access to the doctor and when confirmation is received, she will use her special training to subdue the surgeon so that Stefan and David can transport him alive to West Berlin and then back to Israel.

But things don't go according to plan and soon the three are forced to remain in hiding with their prisoner until they can determine a new course of action. It's while cooped up in their apartment that the doctor begins to use mind games in an effort to gain the psychological advantage while revealing the true evil behind his words.

In more modern times, we learn that Rachel and Stefan had both married and divorced. Their daughter has written a book about the abduction and the days that followed in the apartment detailing her parents as heroes to the cause.

But recent developments and an unexpected suicide by David leave Stefan and Rachel in the same position they were 30 years ago. And one must travel back to Europe to seek out someone who claims to be the original Surgeon of Birkenau.

John Madden is no stranger to award winning dramas. Shakespeare in Love won out over Saving Private Ryan and Ethan Frome was a well received romance back in 1993. Madden works the camera like a maestro in effortlessly weeding the story through multiple decades. The film never loses focus and relies on its strengths – namely the performances of Mirren, Csokas and Chastain – to carry the heavy plot line forward.

However, in the final acts, the story gets a little lost. Watching Mirren head to Kiev, Ukraine was a leap of faith and political, social and moral values begin to choke the life out of what was a better than average thriller up to that point.

With the conclusion of The Debt being too heavy handed to maintain the thin weight of the first ¾, The Debt eventually fails to be the film that showed award promise in the trailers. We are not suggesting that The Debt is a bad film, but its final reel wilt does take away from the execution of its predecessors.

Mirren may still get award recognition come December (the film is officially released December 29th), but it may be a long shot to see The Debt as one of the Best Picture nominees.

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The Debt has several things going for it: an interesting story and some fine performances. It's a pity that the ending was disappointing.

I'd like to commend Helen Mirren on her performance and even though she gets top billing she's not in it much and when she is her performance doesn't merit the top billing. The stars of the movie are undoubtedly the younger characters played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Martin Csokas for it is with them that the events of 1966 are played out and we get a glimpse of what the trio went through during their mission. Jessica was quite excellent, and demonstrates the stress put on a young and inexperienced agent thrust into East Berlin in the 1960s. Marton, as the leader of the trio, was good and his character was never demanding nor bullying in the way some unit leaders can become. Sam Worthington was competent, and perhaps a little subdued, portraying a shy man with more going on inside his head than he wanted the world to see.

There is a plot twist, which I won't mention, and which was cleverly disguised in the trailers, which provides turns the story on its head and propels the movie towards the end that I found disappointing. If someone waits more than thirty years to develop a guilty conscience, something that was not properly developed for one of the characters, then it makes it difficult to believe that they would go about with their decision in a split second and undo everything they stood for. It made their first early decision to be quite pointless and in the end more damaging to others than for the main characters. Some would argue that the ending was just fine but in movies that's all well and good but in real life it's not as simple as that. So, I felt a little bit let down for a movie that I was very interested in watching.

Is it worth recommending, then? Well, the ending probably won't bother too many people and so it is worth watching as the movie keeps a fine level of tension throughout the movie so you're never to sure which way things are going to go until it occurs.

I went to The Debt because I had seen the trailers ages ago and was instantly telling myself I wanted to see this film. Not to be reminded about one of the ugliest of human stains in world history; not because I wanted to think about images in a WWII documentary I happened to watch unattended at an adult party when I was seven years old and will never forget (but, I try); not because I wanted something to feel bad about.

I went because of the reviews, the trailer, and Helen Mirren, and pretty much the entire ensemble of brilliant actors. It was a bit slow starting according to my companion, and some of the initial flashbacks left one a little confused, and then once the story started when the Mossad agents were in Germany to track down and bring the "Surgeon of Birkenau" to trial, I was so glad it was a reminder film. That no one will ever fully understand what drives a nation and group like the Mossad to do what they do. This made me understand a little bit more.

This was a very tragic, thoughtful film with the embodiment of the mortal coil and well worth watching and thinking about. Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain as the young Rachel were so good. Give Mirren another Oscar already. And, the men, including the "Surgeon" who I wanted to kill myself, were all so very good in this.

I don't agree the film lagged at the end. In fact, it left you wondering, questioning, the twist was unexpected, and I am glad, despite the lingering tears in my eyes as I write this, that I saw it. My fellow cinematic partner agreed as well. Go see this film. You won't forget it. And, we really shouldn't ever forget it.

It's a spy thriller with plenty of spies but too few thrills.

As others have mentioned, knowing who is who in their older incarnations is a bit confusing, but I think that was the writer's intention because the confusion is dispelled at the end.

Only watch if you can't find anything else.

It's always nice when you see a movie trailer that looks pretty good, and then when you see the movie it far exceeds your expectations. The Debt, a remake of a 2007 Israeli movie of the same name, is a suspenseful espionage thriller about a team of Israeli Mossad agents as they attempt to track down "the Surgeon of Birkenau". The movie incorporates flashbacks and flash-forwards in a controllable fashion, with approximately half the movie taking place in 1966 and the other half taking place in 1997. The film is based on a screenplay co-written by Jane Goldman and frequent co-collaborator, Matthew Vaughn, a rising star known for his writing and directing of films such as the underrated Kick -Ass and the 2011 summer hit X-Men: First Class. Director John Madden, best known for his Oscar winning movie Shakespeare in Love, crafts an intriguing film that although predictable at times keeps you engaged. In The Debt, Madden has made some great choices in casting; beginning with Oscar winner Helen Mirren and Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson, both of whom provide stellar performances. Jessica Chastain, Martin Csokas, and Sam Worthington, although not having any Oscar nominations of their own, give captivating performances during the movie's most brooding scenes.

I enjoy espionage films, such as Munich, Spy Game and North by Northwest, immensely. The Debt's strength, much like those other three films, is that it's character and story driven and not dependant on action or special effects to maintain its viewers. The pacing is steady and there's a lot of intensity as the agents attempt to accomplish their mission. The subject matter of the film is a dark one, and that's reflected in the film. Unlike your neighborhood police department or county sheriff's department, intelligence agencies do whatever is necessary to get the result they are seeking; such as some uncomfortable visits, for the patient as well as the viewer, with Dr. Bernhardt, played disturbingly by Jesper Christensen The movie kept me intrigued throughout, and I find myself often sliding up to the edge of my seat, unable to tear my eyes away from what was happening. As the film drew to a close, most questions are answered and closure is provided, unlike just about every other movie made today.

Grade: B+

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I usually like tense spy thrillers, but I was seriously disappointed by this one. The "real" action takes place in 1965, when three Mossad agents work in East Berlin to apprehend a Nazi criminal.

Contrary to Mossad's reputation, these are the worst agents, ever. Two young men and a woman (Rachel, played by Chastain) who get entangled in a sex triangle and mess up their mission, because they are too busy with their cavorting.

Besides being unprofessional in their behavior, they are also easily influenced by the Nazi criminal, turned into hostage. If it was me, I could not care less about the babbling of a criminal Nazi, but these three Jew agents listen to him as if he was the oracle of Delphi.

Back to the future, in 1995, their dirty little secret is almost out in the open. The escaped Nazi is going to give an interview to an Ukranian newspaper. Therefore, the woman (older Rachel, played by Mirren) is sent to Ukraina to silence him for good.

The movie ends with a geriatric denouement. Whatever is achieved falls into the category of "too little, too late". I seriously hope real agents are made of better stuff than these three. Also, spy movies deserve more engaging characters.

This espionage thriller is an English-language version of a 2007 Israeli film "Ha-Hov" and it is immediately apparent why an adaptation that will inevitably win a much larger audience was made. This is a gripping tale, intelligently told and cleverly constructed. It is much more exiting than the other spy movie of the summer of 2011 "Tinker Tailor Solider Spy" and a much more authentic representation of the Israeli secret service Mossad than "Munich".

Essentially we have two stories here, set in different times (1965 and 1997) and different locations (Berlin and Israel/Ukraine) but involving the same characters; yet director John Madden - whose first success was the contrasting "Shakespeare In Love" - has done a skillful job in interweaving the two narratives in a manner which requires the viewer to re-evaluate regularly both situations and motivations. The early period works better than the later one and fortunately it accounts for the majority of the film, but this is almost two hours of sustained tension.

Unusually there are seven strong roles in one film. The three Mossad agents Stephan, David and Rachel are played by Marton Csokas, Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain respectively in the Cold War period and portrayed by Tom Wilkinson, Ciarán Hinds and Helen Mirren respectively in the modern day setting, while the Danish Jesper Christensen is the surgeon of Birkenau throughout the story and gives this profoundly unsympathetic role a subtle psychological dimension.

Although most of these roles are male, it is the two female performances that are especially memorable. Mirren has had a brilliant career and it is wonderful to see her at the top of her game in her sixties, while Chastain seems to have suddenly burst into movies with "The Tree Of Live" and clearly has a major career ahead of her.

Good spy-drama-thriller movie. The plot is very interesting, mixing past and present of three Mossad agents involved in an important mission. However, the actors chosen for the older version of the two male characters ended up confusing the story a bit. Apart from this problem, it's a pretty good movie. Not excellent, but pretty good.

A very well made film which I found notable for the performances of those involved. With the action being split between two time-lines there are two actors for each of the main parts; Helen Mirren was excellent as Rachel Singer (1997) and I thought Jessica Chastain was equally good in the same part circa 1965. Tom Wilkinson was great (as ever) as Stephan Gold (1997) with Marton Csokas doing a fine job in 1965. Finally there's Ciarán Hinds who did a good job as David Peretz (1997) and Sam Worthington did an excellent job as the 1965 version. I should also give a mention to Jesper Christensen who did a great job as Doktor Bernhardt / Dieter Vogel.

Based on the Israeli film, "Ha-Hov" (which I haven't seen), I could see parallels with the Steven Spielberg film "Munich". Surprisingly, there is a long section of the film that concentrates on the events in Berlin which I thought was maybe a bit too long. There needed to be (IMO) a little more grounding in 1997 as that is where the film ends. Having said that, I did find this tale quite gripping with an unexpected outcome. I liked the way certain details were kept from the audience until the action switched to 1997. Over all, an interesting drama/thriller with some great performances; I just felt it needed a little more… Still, worth a look.

SteelMonster's verdict: RECOMMENDED.

My Score 7.1/10

IMDb Score: 6.9/10 (based on 28,779 votes at the time of going to press).

MetaScore: 65/100: (Based on 37 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com at the time of going to press).

Rotten Tomatoes 'Tomatometer' Score: 76/100 (based on 165 reviews counted at the time of going to press).

Rotten Tomatoes 'Audience' Score: 67/100 'Liked It' (based on 30,552 user ratings counted at the time of going to press).

You can find an expanded version of this review on my blog: Thoughts of a SteelMonster.

A movie that is entirely driven by the plot is refreshing these days. The script is well written and the acting very good. The dialog and interaction between the Dr. form Birkenau and the more troubled of the 3 young agents builds up in great narrative drama. The twists in the plot keep coming. Everything falls into place, even the somber air of the characters at the start of the movie. To me, the movie really starts with the first twist in the story, a good 45 minutes into the film. Your mind has got to reset the sequence. I thought this is getting interesting.

Will those who you love the most, prefer your trophies or your truth? Mirren's character choice was clear. I enjoyed this film very much, it does actually make you think. How often does that happen these days?

The movie having an apt title, 'The Debt' doesn't convey the true meaning till the last parts of the movie. A true thriller at the start but soon seems shifts into a dramatic and interpersonal conflict paradigm about what's wrong and right, and the past even though being kept in shrouded mystery and a well-guarded secret does haunt you, forcing you to go back and correct it, once and for all.

Helen Mirren does an excellent job (as always) displaying an ubiquitous sense of discomfort and guilt that is present throughout her role. Her interweaving role as a old,retired Mossad-agent with a ghoulish past and a mother who values her daughter's happiness above all. Sam Worthington and Martin Csokas also playing an excellent part on the whole.

The film switches from past to present and vice-versa in an excellent manner, maintaining the thrills by not divulging all the information at once about both the time frames.

I did particularly enjoy the whole movie experience with action(not exactly adrenaline pumping but still there), emotions and guilt sprayed on the whole 110 minutes. Well, the movie might have got a bit higher on my side of the review for relating to riveting historical events like Auschwitz, which always gets me into the research mode about what and how it happened. But keeping that apart, this is still an awesome movie to watch on a weekend after buying the DVD (completely worth it).

'THE DEBT': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

American remake of a 2007 Israeli film, of the same name, about three secret agents sent in to East Berlin in 1966 to capture a notorious Nazi war criminal. The film jumps back and forth between 1966 and 1997 as we see the three agents recalling the events of their mission forty years earlier. It stars Sam Worthington (otherwise known as 'Mr. Blockbuster', of 'AVATAR', 'TERMINATOR SALVATION' and 'CLASH OF THE TITANS' fame), Jessica Chastain (the Bryce Dallas Howard look-alike whose been getting a lot more work than Howard lately) and Marton Csokas as the three agents in their younger years and Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds in their later years. The film was directed by John Madden (of 'SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE' fame) and written by Matthew Vaughn (who also produced the film), Jane Goldman (a usual writing partner of Vaughn's) and Peter Straughan. The film is an effective spy thriller, nothing spectacular (and I expected a little more considering the talent involved) but a decent flick even so.

The story revolves around Mossad agent Rachel Singer (played by Chastain and Mirren) and focuses around her 1966 Berlin assignment when she was teamed with agents David Peretz (Worthington and Hinds) and Stefan Gold (Csokas and Wilkinson). They were given the assignment of capturing Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), also known as 'The Surgeon of Birkenau' (for the atrocious medical experiments he conducted during the war) and bringing him to justice to face his crimes. Rachel and David take cover as a married couple from Argentina and Rachel also poses as a patient of Vogel's at the clinic where he works. During their assignment a love triangle develops between the three with an unplanned pregnancy also developing between two of them. This causes complications which are further aggravated when the mission becomes compromised later on. At one point they're forced to return home and stretch the truth to their superiors and the rest of the world. A lie that later comes back to haunt them.

The film is an interesting and involving character study but only to a certain extent. Chastain is great in the lead and so is Mirren (like always). It's nice to see Worthington stretching a bit as an actor and doing something other than a big budget, big visual action spectacle but his character is probably the least developed in the film. What he does do with the little material he does have is impressive though and he manages to draw a lot of compassion (from the viewer) to his heart felt performance (I just would have liked to have seen more of it). Christensen is memorable as the movie's monstrous villain but Wilkinson overacts a little. The rest of the cast is underused for the most part and the film feels a bit rushed in plot development (despite a somewhat slow pace and small amount of action and thrills). The love triangle is believable though, especially Chastain and Worthington's part of it (and the duo presents a decent amount of chemistry while pulling it off). Madden's directing is fitting and the script is well written but like I said the film feels a little too condensed. As a whole it's entertaining and interesting while you're watching it but nothing most viewers will probably remember to well years from now.

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