Mossad on the trail of a Nazi war criminal
FILM REVIEW: The English-language thriller The Debt centres around a Mossad team charged with capturing a Nazi war criminal in East Berlin in the 1960s and sending him to Israel to stand trial.
There are obvious parallels with the Adolf Eichmann kidnapping and extradition in this film by English-born director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love and Mrs Brown), who has remade the 2007 Israeli film of same name.
The spotlight is on Nazi criminal Dieter Vogel, played by Danish actor Jesper Christensen, who is known as the surgeon of Birkenau for his horrific medical experiments on Jewish camp inmates.
The film begins in 1997 in Israel, where we find the three former agents reminiscing. Rachel Singer (played by British icon Helen Mirren and American actress Jessica Chastain in the character’s youth) still has a “fraught” relationship with her two former Mossad colleagues.
After a romantic triangle developed in Berlin, Rachel ended up marrying (and divorcing) Stefan (Tom Wilkinson as the older man and Marton Csokas as the youth), who still works in a senior role in intelligence.
The third team member, David (Ciaran Hinds in 1997 and Sam Worthington as the youth) had spent the intervening years travelling the world.
Rachel’s daughter has written a biography of her mother, as all three team members became national heroes in Israel for their role in the capture of Vogel.
The Debt has plenty of taut action and violence (those with weak stomachs, be warned). Language issues of films shot in English but set in Israel and Europe can be problematic, but Madden handles this adroitly, partly by having his characters speak German when it is essential for the plot.
Madden uses a mostly British cast (with no lead Jewish actors), thereby avoiding the inevitable “clang” of American accents in characters meant to be Middle Eastern.
The details of the 1960s capture of Vogel, who was practising as an obstetrician in Berlin, are meticulous and realistic. When the Vogel handover goes horribly wrong and the three young Mossad agents are left to their own devices, their growing sense of panic, stress and claustrophobia is palpable.
Setting the action more than 30 years apart allows a neat portrayal of two dramatically different versions of Israel.
However, a major flaw is the film’s casting decisions, with none of the younger actors remotely resembling their older counterparts. And jumping back and forth in time leads to confusion as to which agent is doing what, diminishing the movie’s emotional impact and power.
Nevertheless, the film’s final scenes – again set in 1997 – are powerful and are certain to provide plenty of debate.
REVIEW: Don Perlgut
Rating: ***
PHOTO: Ciaran Hinds and Helen Mirren in John Madden’s espionage thriller The Debt.
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