Movie Review - "The Debt" (2011) **1/2

     I was not familiar with The Debt at all until a couple of months ago when I was skimming through the new releases on Netflix and ran across it. It sounded like an espionage thriller and I'm usually game for something like that, so I threw it in my queue and forgot about it for a while. I had pretty well forgotten about it again when it finally showed up in my mail box recently. I decided not to do any advance reading on it and just went in blind, it's fun to do that every so often. The result was less than stunning, but man, there is a GREAT movie lurking under the surface here. There is a lot to like and I did enjoy a large portion of this movie but ultimately it falls just a bit short of being really good. As can often happen with films in this genre, they can get buried in their own story sometime and become a bit too complicated. I felt a little of that here. There are two storylines and one is way more fascinating than the other. Unfortunately, the storyline that didn't work as much brought the whole thing down with it in my opinion.

     The movie starts in 1997, current time according to the story, and three retired Mossad secret agents are being celebrated with a new book detailing their 1966 mission where they infiltrated East Berlin and captured Nazi war criminal Vogel. The three agents, Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren), Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson), and David Peretz (Ciaran Hands) were celebrated in their country for the accomplishment but we quickly learn in present day that something is awry when David commits suicide. Rachel and Stephan know why, but we as the audience are not let in on that reasoning right away. The movie then takes us back to 1966 for a failry straightforward telling of what happened on that mission...and how not everything may have happened as people would believe. Secrets, and allegiances, will be put to the ultimate test. The suspense builds across both timelines leading to surprising revelations.

     When this film is taking place in 1966, it really works. I think that story alone would have been worth a feature length movie. Watching the middle portion of this film, I was reminded of the great Spielberg film Munich, a film that I had in my top 100 list. Some of the tension is on the same level of that classic, it has a Hitchcockian feel to it. The good news is, this takes up a good portion of the movie. The bad news is that it doesn't take up the whole thing. In present time, I just simply didn't care as much. It's not the fault of the actors. Mirren, Wilkinson and Hands are all well-respected in their field and are great here. But I feel they are overshadowed by their younger 1966 counterparts played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas, all of whom deserve kudos for their work here. The movie is directed by John Madden, who I learned directed Shakespeare in Love, a movie that I despised and have a personal disgust for because I feel it robbed Saving Private Ryan of a Best Picture Oscar. I'll never forgive that!! But Madden does a much better job here, working with a script that has three screenwriters, and therein may lie the problem. There may be one too many hands in the cookie jar and it didn't help things out. I'm not sure, but the end result was a little disappointing. Focus on the 1960's stuff and you will be fine. I give it a very slight recommend.