‘The Debt’ pays off with action more than big message

MOVIE REVIEW

August 30, 2011|By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

***

THE DEBT Directed by: John Madden

Written by: Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, Peter Straughan, based on a screenplay by Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum

Starring: Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Marton Csokas

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs

Running time: 113 minutes

Rated: R (some violence and language)

In German, Ukrainian, and English, with subtitles

“The Debt,’’ an English-language remake of a 2007 Israeli hit, is being sold as a straight-up “Mission Impossible’’ thriller about three Mossad agents bringing a Nazi war criminal to justice. In fact it’s a lot pulpier and more dramatically interesting than that, but you can’t explain why without giving away the twist that resets the story’s priorities halfway through. Suddenly a movie about heroes has become a film about humans, and the stark narrative field of black and white has become infiltrated by shades of gray. The film’s a potboiler but a gripping one, and it leaves you chewing on both its nuances and implausibilities.

Plus, there’s the fun of watching three of Great Britain’s finest actors play older versions of an American, a Brit, and a Hungarian Kiwi. “The Debt’’ shuttles busily back and forth between 1966 East Berlin and 1997 Tel Aviv. In the former, the undercover Mossad team of Stephan (Marton Csokas), David (Sam Worthington), and Rachel (Jessica Chastain) schemes to trap Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), the one-time “Surgeon of Birkenau’’ now passing as an anonymous German gynecologist.

In the 1997 sequences, the three are still grappling with the aftermath of that mission - the deceptions and lurching emotions only they know. Celebrated as national icons, they’re damaged, battle-scarred, small. Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) is now an agency muckety-muck desperate to cover his past. Rachel (Helen Mirren) has divorced him and lives mostly for their daughter (Romi Aboulafia), who has just written a book about her famous warrior mom. David (Ciarán Hinds) has fallen off the grid until he returns, early on, to set the final game going.

What the hell happened in East Berlin? Directed with creamy stodginess by John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love’’), “The Debt’’ winds its way through past and present toward that central riddle, which it solves at the midpoint only to drop the floor from beneath its characters. Until then, the film has given good spy-thriller payback, with a white-knuckle scene in a heavily guarded East German railway station and a swoony romantic triangle between loner David, naive Rachel, and manipulative Stephan.