DVD: The Debt
Maybe it’s just me, since this film got lots of good reviews, but I found The Debt to be a good half hour movie wrapped in a mediocre movie that went on for 104 minutes.
It’s billed as a Helen Mirren vehicle, but she’s really just in the frame story. The main tale stars the smashingly lovely Jessica Chastain as young Helen, along with Martin Csokas playing the young Ciaran Hinds and Sam Worthington playing the young Tom Wilkinson. Clearly, these characters became more talented actors as they got older! The only really great performance comes from Jesper Christensen who plays an evil Nazi so convincingly he better hope God knows he was only acting.
A remake of an Israeli hit I haven’t seen, the movie is the theoretically good story of three Mossad agents sent into East Berlin to bring a Nazi war criminal back to Israel for trial. When the kidnap goes awry, they get stuck in a house with their prisoner — a man of Satanic evil who can torment our heroes psychologically even with his hands tied behind his back. That’s the good part of the story — an entertaining cat-and-mouse game with some interesting moral implications. But everything that happens before and after it manages to be both unbelievable and completely predictable. On top of which, the plot points make us care less and less about the characters as the story progresses.
Also — and for me most annoying of all — the morality of the story is skewed and ridiculous. I don’t think any real Mossad agent would have had a moment’s hesitation about silencing this Nazi demon with a bullet — nor should he. This notion that Jews — and by extension westerners — are meant to be so fastidiously committed to civilized norms of justice that they can’t get their moral hands dirty in an emergency or war situation is the figment of child-like artistes more interested in displaying their own pristine virtue than telling real stories about real people. I’m reminded of Steven Spielberg’s stinky film Munich which shows Mossad agents suffering from remorse and moral degradation after they deliver vengeance for the Palestinian massacre of Israelis at the 1972 Olympics. In real life, the agents who killed the killers felt no remorse whatsoever nor should they have. Sometimes our killers have to kill people. That’s why we have them. Life’s tough. Our stories should celebrate their courage and commitment to justice instead of sticking them with the namby-pamby souls of pampered filmmakers.
Likewise, in The Debt, when Csokas puts a gun to the Nazi’s head, Worthington stops him saying, “We’re not animals.” It would have been both more realistic and more admirable if he’d just helped mop up the brains afterward.
They’re Western leftists who make these movies. Think of the Bush era and how many of them answered the question of would you torture a terrorist to save an innocent life. They seem helpless in the face of real evil, because they assume that we must always adhere to some abstract rules when confronting it.
Yeah I have to agree, I spent a lot of the movie shouting, “Just kill him already”…and just shaking my head at the sheer stupidity that happened because they hadn’t slit his throat.
But you know, bleeding hearts don’t want to admit that we all have the capacity to kill. They always want to say that vengeance is for the un-evolved lower animals. Which is funny, cause last time I checked, nature is very cruel and vengeful… and according to them, on the one hand we’re rutting beasts that aren’t built for monogamy, but on the other we’re evolved enlightened beings when it comes to violence over our fellow mammal brethren.
Well which is it? Cause it can’t be both. We either are nothing more than mammals…or we’re something other with a knowledge of right and wrong and moral guidance. Can’t say morals mean nothing and are just a religious construct THEN pull out a moral justification AGAINST killing…doesn’t make any sense.
Actually, I believe it was Sam Worthington who played a young Ciaran Hinds (David) and Marton Csokas who plays the young Tom Wilkinson (Stephan).
I enjoyed the movie, but I can see your point. I thought, however, it’s more about the cost of living a lie for so many years. Should they have just held their own trial and executed the man? Perhaps, but they were trying to do what they thought was right. Lying, however, was not right.
What annoys me is when characters who should know better fail to think thinks through beforehand. If they are Mossad agents, then they should have already thought about what to do. Professionals plan ahead.
When I see characters act like amateurs when they are supposedly trained killers my eyes roll out of their sockets.
Check out the original, Israeli version. Much better.
I agree. Ha-Hov was a better and more compelling than the Debt. Klavan does himself no favors by not seeing Ha-Hov before reviewing the Debt.
Too often the later Hollywood versions of some previous movie are not as good.
The movie “The talented Mr Riley” does not stand up to the previous movie “Plein Soleil”, starring Alain Delon.
Quite a contrasting view when compared with the praise for “The Debt” from Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd.
I appreciate Drew’s fierce sense of justice and morality, but do we really know how we would act if we were holding a gun on a villain? I think my stomach would turn over at the moment I pulled the trigger.
I agree. The movie was predictable, implausible and the 2 younger male actors’ accents and acting were quite terrible. I was underwhelmed, especially considering the considerable talent involved.