Thursday, 13 October 2011

Cinema Review: The debt


A group of mossad agent captures a Nazi war criminal in 1966 but in 1997 an unspoken truth about that episode comes back to haunt them.

The premise and the early execution of this movie are wonderful. The whole flashback sequence in Berlin is very good filmmaking, tense and gripping. The action sequences where they abduct the Nazi and try to smuggle him to Israel are very good and engaging managing to convey a sense of urgency missing from most of the big blockbusters.
This Nazi war criminal, practically Mengele in all but name, is practically a devil in human guise. His dialogue is very well written and extremely unsettling. There is a whole masterful long sequence where our heroes are increasingly psyched out just by having him around and talking to them.
Then the movie sadly fizzles out. The whole present day part is unconvincing and sub par in regard to the Berlin sequence. It just looks like they didn’t really know how to end the story in an engaging way and not even Helen Mirren is able to sell me a fight sequence between a lady in her sixties and an octogenarian, it’s just wrong.
This is a shame because even if I must admit that the ending fits thematically with the rest of the movie I left the cinema feeling like it was all a big missed occasion. The cast is very strong with a nice distinction for Jessica Chastain who is establishing herself as a lady to watch and solid turns from everybody else apart from Sam Worthington who clearly struggles to convey Vulnerable.
Anyway nice movie but nothing unmissable.

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