Film Score: Thomas Newman Cinematography: Ben Davis
Starring: Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Jesper Christensen and Ciarán Hinds
The incomparable director of Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, John Madden has also essayed the thriller with great success in Killshot. His most recent foray into the genre is The Debt, with a cast that includes in its top end two of the most brilliant British actors working today, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. The film is a remake of an Israeli picture called Hachov, about three Mossad agents who must revisit a defining mission from their past. The story is told in flashback but begins in the present with a dinner for the daughter of Mirren and Wilkinson, who has written a book about the mission her parents were on in 1965: the capture of a Nazi doctor who did experiments on inmates in Birkeanu and who was then a seemingly mild-mannered gynecologist in East Berlin.
In the present narrative, Ciarán Hinds is taken out from his apartment by a Mossad agent and led to a car. When he sees Wilkinson in the following car he steps out into the road and commits suicide when an oncoming bus hits him. Soon we find out that Wilkinson is one of the leaders of Mossad, and that Hinds was one of the members of the 1965 mission. As he had talked to Mirren the previous day, Wilkinson wanted to know what the discussion was about. At the dinner, Mirren is asked to read a chapter from her daughter’s book. The scene flashes back to East Germany and their Nazi captive. When the narrative returns to the present the daughter tells the audience that Mirren would not discuss the mission and she obtained the bulk of her information from Wilkinson. From there the story moves back to 1965 and the mission to capture the Nazi doctor.
While the plot sounds fairly straightforward, it’s anything but that. The script is very well done and the twists are quite inventive and original. The young Helen Mirren is played by Jessica Chastain who has done some great work recently in films like Zero Dark Thirty and The Help. Sam Worthington plays the young Hinds with an intensity that is refreshing after some of the lesser, popular films he’s been in. The young Wilkinson is played by Marton Csokas, but the real force onscreen is Jesper Christensen as Dieter Vogel, the “Surgeon of Birkeanu.” He does a nice turn as a Hanibal Lecter type villain who uses psychology to get into the heads of his captors and find a way to use their weaknesses against them. Of course Mirren and Wilkenson are spectacular, as always, and Madden is supremely confident behind the camera. The Debt is one of those rare suspense thrillers that delivers on all levels, the story, the acting, as well as a tremendous amount of entertainment.
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