Worthington, 35, does it again in “The Debt,’’ which opens Wednesday in the Boston area. The film is adapted from the 2007 Israeli thriller “Ha-Hov.’’ Worthington plays David, another close-shaven quiet guy, who is part of a triumvirate of young Mossad secret agents charged with capturing a Nazi war criminal in mid-1960s East Berlin. But the trap goes awry. A lie is told. Decades later, the now-retired agents - recast as Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and a weighty, worry-eyed Ciarán Hinds as Worthington - must confront the unraveling of their secret.
“It was never about the thrill of hunting down a war criminal,’’ Worthington said. “We always talked about it like holding water in your hand. It’s kind of a hard task to do, something so simple, but it just keeps dripping, dripping. That’s what’s happening with these guys. They’re trying to keep their lives together but this simple act of not being totally honest ripples through their whole lives…
“I like that idea,’’ he continued, “that we all have secrets that we harbor, baggage we don’t want to let out, and the more you don’t confront those demons, the bigger and more intrusive they get.’’
Worthington liked it so much that he bought into the plot, script unseen. Director John Madden pitched it to him that convincingly in person in Albuquerque, where Worthington was shooting the latest “Terminator’’ in relative anonymity since “Avatar’’ had not yet been released and “Clash of the Titans’’ wasn’t even in the can. Madden (“Shakespeare in Love,’’ “Proof’’) says he wanted Worthington based solely on his work as Joe in the acclaimed 2004 Australian film “Somersault.’’
