82/100 (113 min, 2010)Plot: 1965, three Mossad agents cross into East Berlin to apprehend a notorious Nazi war criminal. Thirty years later, the secrets the agents share come back to haunt them.
Director: John Madden
Writers: Matthew Vaughn (screenplay), Jane Goldman (screenplay), Peter Straughan (screenplay), Assaf Bernstein (film "Ha-Hov") & Ido Rosenblum (film "Ha-Hov")
Stars: Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Tom Wilkinson
The cost of lies
"The Debt" is a skillfully and elegantly shot film about the mission to apprehend "the surgeon of Birkenau"- Doktor Bernhardt, criminal responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. The mission is a task ensured to three people - Stephan (Marton Csokas and Tom Wilkinson), David (Sam Worthington and Ciarán Hinds) and Rachel (Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren). We see the story of how their mission turns out and then we jump ahead 30 years to the moment Rachel's and Stephan's daughter writes a book about her parents heroic mission. From the very first moments we sense there is more to the story, something that remained unsaid for three decades. Now Rachel, David and Stephan will have to pay the prize for what they did.
What makes the movie very interesting is that it shows more then your usual "catch the bad guy" movie. Yes, a good portion of the film is spent on agents' efforts to apprehend their target, but once they have him the best part of the movie begins - the part where the criminal tries to manipulate and break his captors. Since the three assigned to the task are so young and mostly inexperienced it's very easy for him to do. The best part comes when while being forced fed by David the prisoner tells him that the reason he thought Jews deserved to die was because it only took four guards to line them up and lead them to death, nobody resisted, not even when they took their children. The film is filled with strong moments like that, but the unimaginable cruelty of those words and the amazing ability Jesper Christensen has to stole the movie with just one scene really made the movie memorable for me.
