Absolutely Fantastic

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

I mainly knew about this film because of the leading actress, having seen the DVD cover many times, apart from that I didn't have a clue what the plot or story involved, I hope it may be something worth passing the time with, directed by John Madden (Mrs Brown, Shakespeare in Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). Basically in 1965, Mossad agents Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) are in East Berlin, they are assigned to kidnap Nazi Dieter Vogel (Quantum of Solace's Jesper Christensen), aka The Surgeon of Birkenau, a war criminal who carried out medical experiments on Jews during World War II. During the process, Stephan tells Rachel that David lost his entire family in The Holocaust, this drives his dedication to their mission, but also makes his hesitant to become emotionally involved with her, both Stephan and David are attracted to Rachel, she is attracted to David, but sleeps with Stephan. The group are successful in the abduction, with Rachel injecting the doctor with sedative during an examination, but fail to bring him to the west side, so they are forced to hold him in an apartment building, taking turns to monitor and feed him. But one night, following a severe beating from David, Vogel manages to cut through his bonds and escapes, but the trio of young agents lie to their government, telling them that Rachel killed the doctor while he was running away. More than thirty years later, in 1997, the three agents are honoured as heroes, Rachel's daughter Sarah Gold (Romi Aboulafia) is releasing a book about the mission of her mother and the two other agents. The three former agents, Rachel Singer (Dame Helen Mirren) who still bares the scar across her face, Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) who is now a paralytic in a wheelchair, and David Peretz (Ciarán Hinds) who is missing, they are now all retired. Rachel still feels uncomfortable about the lie they have been living with, out of the blue David appears in Tel Aviv and commits suicide, Stephan investigates his death. Soon enough it is discovered that Dieter Vogel is alive in a hospital in Kiev, Ukraine, and will be interviewed by a journalist, it is discovered the man is an impostor, but Rachel is shocked to see the real Vogel. Rachel is determined to travel to Kiev and conclude what should have been done all those years ago, in a confrontation Vogel stabs Rachel twice with a pair of scissors, but she kills Vogel with a poisonous syringe in the back, as she limps away, a note she wrote for journalists telling the truth about their mission is discovered, to be relayed to the world. Mirren with her short time on screen is fine, and Chastain then a rising star proves herself, there are some gripping enough action style sequences, fights and a botched mission, the switching backwards and forwards in time a little distracting, and the choice of actors playing the younger and older characters is questionable, when they don't look much like each other, is is mostly slow, but a relatively interesting spy drama thriller. Okay!

I usually like tense spy thrillers, but I was seriously disappointed by this one. The "real" action takes place in 1965, when three Mossad agents work in East Berlin to apprehend a Nazi criminal.Contrary to Mossad's reputation, these are the worst agents, ever. Two young men and a woman (Rachel, played by Chastain) who get entangled in a sex triangle and mess up their mission, because they are too busy with their cavorting.Besides being unprofessional in their behavior, they are also easily influenced by the Nazi criminal, turned into hostage. If it was me, I could not care less about the babbling of a criminal Nazi, but these three Jew agents listen to him as if he was the oracle of Delphi.Back to the future, in 1995, their dirty little secret is almost out in the open. The escaped Nazi is going to give an interview to an Ukranian newspaper. Therefore, the woman (older Rachel, played by Mirren) is sent to Ukraina to silence him for good. The movie ends with a geriatric denouement. Whatever is achieved falls into the category of "too little, too late". I seriously hope real agents are made of better stuff than these three. Also, spy movies deserve more engaging characters.

A spy film without American spies involved is always a good start.The story revolves around three Mossad agents two men and a woman and the mission they carried out. It's set in two time lines the time of east Germany and present day where the daughter of the woman has written a book about the spy life of her mother and the mission that made them infamous.I'd recommend this if you enjoyed Munich and tinker tailor soldier and spy. While the two mentioned films focus on more spy double crosses and mysteries. This is more of a drama revolving around the event and the layers of lies it involved. The acting by the two set of actors (different actors on the two different time lines) is brilliant and you feel touched. It is possible to feel or at least understand the circumstances, the risk and above the uncertainty involved undertaking these missions.The drama does not only show spies as spies but people, something the American's (Show) has able to achieve. It does get slow in parts and predictable in others. If you are looking to see a great spy film, I'd say go for Munich or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy but if you're looking for a drama where the cast of characters happen to be spies this is a good watch.

'The Truth' or 'The Truth That Needs To Be Said'? this is one of the dilemmas facing the heroes of 'The Debt', which is quite an exotic entry in the list of films made by John Madden, the exoticism being that it's well closer to the pattern of routine Hollywood thrillers than movies like Shakespeare in Love or The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.There are however a few reasons that make this film interesting, even if you are not necessarily a fan of Mossad action movies processed by the American commercial cinema filters. This is the story of an unfinished business which involves a team of Israeli idealistic young agents of Mossad trying to capture in the 60s one of the notorious war criminals modeled on the image of 'doctor' Mengele. Their mission takes them in no other place than East Berlin in the days of the Cold War, and when things go wrong they have to make extreme choices - not only about life and death, but also about absolute and convenient truth. The story alternates between the 60s and the 90s, which opens another kind of question mark about whether big mistakes can ever be fixed. Of course they can, it's Hollywood stuff after all. This does not necessarily result in a great movie.While the premises are interesting the execution is far from brilliant. Director Madden brings nothing new in a genre that had so many successes and even more failures, beyond quite a rigorous and detailed rendition of the East Berlin atmosphere. The biggest failure is however in the way he directs the characters of his Israeli heroes. They behave and talk like no Israeli, and even the setting of the scenes supposed to take place in Israel in Israeli location does not help. The approach is superficial and does not go too deep beyond the crust of the characters, and this crust does not seem genuine at all. I love Helen Mirren, she is best as queens or chief-detective roles, and I found even her acting as a retired agent in the RED series to be delicious. Here she undertakes another retired agent role, and I am sorry to say, she is not at her best. At the end of the screening I remained with the feeling that the makers of this film still have some 'Debt' to their viewers.