I almost passed on “The Debt” because the local paper gave it a pretty bad review and just 2.5 stars out of 5. Eventually, I saw it anyways and found it much better than it’d been critiqued. A thriller about Mossad agents on a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal in 1966, “The Debt” kept me on the edge of my seat for about the entire film.
It starts in 1997 as the former agents, played in older age by Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson, are being honored for the success of the ’66 mission at a book event by two of the agents’ daughter. Mirren’s character, Rachel, reads from the book, recounting the heroics of the mission, but from her despondency, all appears not quite right.
Flash back to 1966, and the three agents, played in younger years by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas, are sent to East Berlin with a plan to bring the Nazi “Surgeon of Birkenau” back to Israel to face justice. But what happens there is far different than the later version recounted from the book.
Turns out, for 30 years, the agents have agonizingly kept secret what really happened. But now one of the agents looks to come clean, just as a journalist is about to publish a scoop on the war criminal. The ending gets a bit crazy, but at this point it’s impossible to turn away.
The screenplay, though fictional, seems authentic, and is helped along by strong acting and by being filmed on location. Like “Munich,” another excellent film about a Mossad mission, it’s filled with nail-biting suspense. Interestingly, Ciaran Hinds plays in both of these films. As for those who liked Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington, who were great in this, look for them again in the upcoming “Texas Killing Fields.”
