REVIEW | The Debt (2011)



A story about loser spies. 

It's 1965 and three young Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) agents go on a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal, the famous "Surgeon of Birkenau," who conducted horrific experiments on Jews during World War II. Yes, Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain), David Petzer ( Sam Worthington ), and Stephan (Marton Csokas ) are physically skilled agents, but they lack the intelligence to perform a fairly simple mission, which is further complicated by their unspoken love triangle.

Fastforward to1997 and old and retired Rachel (Helen Mirren), Stephan (Tom Willkinson), and David (Ciarán Hinds) are national heroes despite being loser spies. But suddenly, their past mistake unexpectedly comes back to hunt them.

A remake of the Israeli film of the same name and directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), The Debt is sparsely thrilling. As an espionage story, it has fairly done its job in tensing you and gripping you with suspense from time to time. But since our heroes are losers, we don't get the thrill and excitement of admiration.

The Debt, despite its serious tone, feels like a parody. A story about an embarrassing failure of a spy-- or a group of spies, to be precise. The agents' flaws and incompetence are too unbelievable that you wonder whether the story was originally a comedy and was later on turned into a serious spy thriller.  The love triangle is more resounding in this movie, sad and touching. And Jessica Chastain as the young Rachel is captivating, her character vulnerable and terrified that you naturally forgive her shortcomings. 

The Debt is a shallow story but will nevertheless carry you towards the end. But instead of sympathizing with the loser spies, you will be mentally snickering. They're just too unbelievably incompetent for spies. If their failures are still safely within the boundaries of "acceptable errors," considering their intelligent and sensitive profession, the story would have shined. The film clearly is supposed to be a sad tragedy because of their failures, but since the failures are laughably foolish, and because we are presented with spies lacking in mental capacity, it just did not work.

The Debt is essentially a film based on a story with a poorly written conflict. The visual translation is good; smooth, fairly engaging, flawless, correct...It's very much an acceptable filmmaking...but, alas, an unacceptable story.


2 out of 5 stars



Comments

Sumi Go said…
Eeek.. Most of the time, good visuals will really not be enough to carry a movie with a bad story.. >.<
Unknown said…
definitely not wasting my time on it then haha