Guest Author - Valerie Valdez
English director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) fills this taut, smart thriller with a flesh and blood heroine who holds on to a secret and troubled conscience. Beginning in 1997, Rachel’s ex-husband and fellow agent, Stephan (Tom Wilkinson), tells her the third member of that mission committed suicide on the eve of her award. Then the story flashes back to 1965 when the three agents, Rachel (now played by Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) as they start the undercover mission to capture an infamous former Nazi doctor, Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen).
The three agents are not portrayed as super heroes out to save the world, but as dedicated and skilled soldiers determined to finally serve justice years after the holocaust. Think Spielberg’s Munich meets James Bond. With their collective “never let it happen again” attitude, the agents hunt down Vogel now living and working peacefully as a physician in East Berlin. Their mission is to kidnap and return him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. Though not a simple mission, it is doable as Rachel goes undercover as one of his patients. Once they capture him, the difficult part is getting him out of Cold War Berlin without being caught. The movie’s main tension and suspense explodes in a railway station as Vogel chillingly plays mind games with them about the holocaust. Without giving away too much, the agents let their conscience and the mission take a backseat to their questionable actions that leads to each one living a lie for years.
Mirren and Wilkerson are in their usual top form convincing as both a former couple and fellow agents. Madden, Mirren and Wilkerson worked previously on an early episode of the superior BBC “Prime Suspect” series. Sam Worthington is credible as David, with Christensen plays a clever yet still terrifying Vogel. However, the real acting find is Jessica Chastain, who is perfect as Rachel. You can see how her younger Rachel morphed into the scared agent still bothered by her conscience years later. This is Jessica Chastain’s year, first with her breakout performance in The Help and now The Debt. Watch for this actress in the future.
The Debt works as a thriller, a war story and even a love story, but most of all, it is a morality tale that asks the question, do two wrongs make a right.
