The Debt
3 1/2 stars (out of 4)
Rated 14A
Every year at the Toronto International Film Festival, at least one excellent movie seems to get pushed off the edge of Hollywood’s overcrowded table. Release in theatres comes slowly, if at all, and when it does, it feels like an afterthought.
David Schwimmer’s worthy family drama Trust starring Clive Owen and Catherine Keener, a promising TIFF 2010 premiere, suffered a direct-to-DVD fate it certainly didn’t deserve.
And now we have The Debt, a superb thriller/political drama from John Madden (Shakespeare in Love).
Starring Helen Mirren and a then-unknown actress Jessica Chastain — now everywhere, earning kudos for The Tree of Life and The Help and due back at TIFF in Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus — it was my pick for best of the fest last year .
All the more reason to see The Debt. Relentlessly paced and artfully lensed and constructed, it’s a first-rate thriller that explores loyalty, duty to country and self and the price of deception with skill and razor-sharp precision.
It asks us to look at our heroes, especially ones anointed through patriotism and to explore the burdens these people carry.
Mirren plays Rachel Singer, a former Mossad agent and Israeli national hero thanks to an act of bravery with the agency more than 30 years earlier. Brittle and cautious, she finds no joy in her current heralded status and remains haunted by her past.
Mirren’s restrained performance is equal to the compelling story about a trio of agents and the secret they keep — each for their own reason.
The action straddles two timelines: Israel in 1997 and East Berlin in 1965.
Mirren plays the modern-day Rachel, while Chastain ably handles duties as the younger Rachel, who teams with fellow agents David (Sam Worthington) and Stefan (Marton Csokas) to track down Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen, also superb), a Nazi war criminal known as the Surgeon of Birkenau.
Vogel once performed appalling experiments on children and is now working under an assumed identity, ironically, as a physician specializing in women’s fertility in East Berlin.
In a safe house, the agents play out public roles, seeming to be everyday Berliners while they privately train in close combat and plan to bring their target to justice. The Holocaust is a relatively recent event to these young people, having touched their lives in horrific ways.
Key to the mission is Rachel’s willingness to pretend she is a young bride unable to conceive, seeking medical help from Vogel.
They trap their prey, planning to hold him until he can be smuggled out of Berlin to stand trial in Israel, until the events of one night and a decision each makes about what takes place change their lives forever.
Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds are the older and still-tormented versions of the young Mossad agents, completing this dream cast. They are excellent, but just try to take your eyes off Mirren’s iron-willed Rachel.
The screenplay from Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan comes from the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov and the story moves at a good pace, yet slowly reveals its layers.
As much a mystery as a political thriller, The Debt is a captivating film that is stamped with Madden’s touch. He has said he was inspired by 1970s thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and Marathon Man and his fondness for these political thrillers is evident.
The Debt isn’t perfect, but it comes close several times and will make audiences rethink their definition of a hero: Sometimes the label is more of a curse than a blessing.
Linda Barnard is a syndicated movie critic for the Toronto Star.