Movie Review The Debt

The Debt (2011) 

Directed by John Madden 

Written by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, Peter Straughan 

Starring Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Martin Csokas, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wilkinson

Release Date August 31st, 2011 

Published August 30th, 2011 

"The Debt" is one of the bigger disappointments of 2010. A phenomenal cast, including Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Chastain, led by Oscar nominated director John Madden deliver a movie that is truly riveting until the final 15 minutes when the film flies so far off the rails that it trashes all that came before it.

"The Debt" tells the story of three Mossad agents who travel to East Germany at the height of the Cold War in an attempt to capture a Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen). This particular criminal is hiding out as a gynecologist thus creating the need for a female agent to join a pair of male agents already in place.

Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain) is just 25 years old and working as a translator when she is drafted for this dangerous mission. She joins mission commander Stephan Gold (Martin Csokas) and the man who will pose as her husband, David Peretz (Sam Worthington), in East Germany where she will pose as a patient for the Nazi and get close enough to render him unconscious.

The mission is undoubtedly the most exciting sequence in "The Debt." Director John Madden brings an arm rest, squeezing tension to the scene where Rachel takes down the doctor and her fellow agents sneak the doctor out the side door. What happens next I will leave you to discover.

"The Debt" employs a shifting timeline that allows us a glimpse 30 years into the future. In the future Rachel's daughter has written a book about her mother's heroic actions in the capture of the butchering Nazi criminal. Rachel, now played by Helen Mirren, however, indicates by her lack of cooperation with her own daughter's book that something happened on the mission that we aren't entirely aware of.

Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds play the elder versions of Stephan and David and while Stephan has parlayed the results of the mission into a highly successful political career, David disappeared for a very long time before emerging on the eve of the release of Rachel's daughter's book.

What drove David underground and has Rachel feeling intense guilt? I will leave that for you to discover should you decide to see "The Debt." Sadly, I don't recommend that you do see "The Debt." Despite a few terrific scenes, another terrific performance from It-Girl Jessica Chastain, brilliant in both "The Help" and "The Tree of Life" earlier this year, and a very compelling turn by Helen Mirren, "The Debt" has a massive flaw that it cannot overcome.

The massive flaw, which I will not reveal, is in the film's ending. It's one of those endings that, if you're like me, will leave you shaking your head and wanting to say to director John Madden: Really? In an apoplectic fashion reminiscent of the SNL Weekend Update snark.

I cannot stress enough how wildly disappointing this ending is. The end of "The Debt" reduces the film to a message so juvenile and parochial that you just can't believe the filmmakers wasted their time with it. More importantly, you can't believe they wasted your time and that of this brilliant cast who deserved so much more.

"The Debt" is among the biggest disappointments of the year. There is so much good in this movie that only an ending as wildly ludicrous as this could take the movie from potential Oscar contender to a movie that I cannot recommend because of its massively, wildly flawed final minutes.