The Debt (2010)

Directed by: John Madden | 114 minutes | action, drama, thriller | Actors: Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Marton Csokas, Jesper Christensen, Adar Beck, Nitzan Sharron, Romi Aboulafia, Alexander E. Fennon

Suddenly she was there, the red-haired American actress Jessica Chastain (1981). For years she earned her spurs in the theater. Sporadically she was seen in television series such as “ER” and “Law and Order”. However, she was a great unknown to the general public. Until 2011, the year of her breakthrough. While her contribution in the Shakespeare film ‘Coriolanus’ (2011) was still limited, in Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life’ (2011) she makes an indelible impression and she convincingly plays Brad Pitt, who plays not bad at all. Her role in ‘The Help’ (2011), a drama about black housekeepers in 1960s Mississippi, is also acclaimed. Many people describe Chastain as a future Oscar winner and the natural successor to acclaimed actresses such as Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. Not only because of her slender appearance and beautiful red hair, but also because of her undeniable acting talent. A woman to keep an eye on!

‘The Debt’ (2010) by director John Madden (of ‘Shakespeare in Love’, 1999) offers Chastain another opportunity to showcase her talents. The film, an adaptation of the 2007 Israeli ‘Ha-Hov’, revolves around three secret agents from Israel’s Mossad, who are sent in the mid-1960s to capture a Nazi doctor. However, their mission didn’t quite go according to plan and the decisions they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives. When Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) attends her daughter’s book launch in 1997, which chronicled the events of that particular mission, old wounds are ripped open. Her ex-husband Stephan (Tom Wilkinson), who was also involved in the mission, shows up, as does the third lead, David (Ciarán Hinds). The three share a secret, which, however, starts to gnaw at them more and more. They have hero status in their homeland of Israel, but do they deserve it?

At the heart of the film is a throwback to 1965, when young Rachel (Jessica Chastain), along with Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington), is sent to East Berlin to see Dr. Bernhardt (Jesper Christensen), better known. as the ‘surgeon of Birkenau’. Bernhardt now goes through life as Doctor Vogel and is a respected gynaecologist. But he will pay for his actions of twenty years earlier, the trio of Mossad agents believe. Their plan to get Vogel seems to be succeeding. But with the crafty doctor gagged in their dingy East Berlin apartment and David’s burgeoning feelings for Rachel (who is already dating Stephan), tensions run high. Vogel is bold enough to pit the trio against each other. It’s his only chance to escape. It is precisely in these haunting apartment scenes that ‘The Debt’ is at its best. The subcutaneous tensions are well exploited and the strong acting of all four actors (yes, even the usually very one-sided Sam Worthington shows himself from his best side!) lifts the film to a higher level.

The nerve-wracking middle section sets the bar high for the third act. Unfortunately ‘The Debt’ sinks towards the end in an unbelievable final chord. It’s that top actors like Mirren and Wilkinson help you through the plot, otherwise the movie would have collapsed like a house of cards. The hitches in the plot are one of the few blemishes on this intelligent and stylish thriller. It’s nice that we get to see one crucial scene several times, each time from a different angle, revealing new information. In this way the secret of the three secret agents is slowly but surely unraveled. ‘The Debt’ addresses complicated moral issues, with the emphasis not so much on the political as on the psychological aspect. The characters are haunted by a lie from their past. A lie that has earned them hero status. Now that that lie threatens to come out, their position is wavering. All three characters deal with this differently.

‘The Debt’ is an intelligent, ambitious film, perhaps chasing more than it can deliver. Mainly thanks to the excellent acting by the entire cast and an exciting, long flashback in which Chastain and Christensen steal the show in a claustrophobic setting, Madden has managed to turn it into a compelling psychological thriller that is more than worth watching.