The Debt Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

The Debt Blu-ray Movie Review

What's passed is never really past.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 23, 2011

There’s probably no nation that takes its security as seriously as Israel, obviously for good reason. Anyone who’s ever flown El Al (the Israeli national airline) knows the absolutely no nonsense approach of the screeners one confronts before boarding, something that has thus far kept the airline thankfully free of any terrorism or hijacking attempts. In Israel itself a network of not especially covert forces is on display helping to ensure whatever fragile peace occasionally breaks out in that war torn region. But behind the scenes is another labyrinthine organization known as (The) Mossad, more or less the equivalent to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, a group which monitors worldwide activity and engages in a variety of covert activities, many of which have never seen the light of day, but a few of which have become the stuff of legend. When five Mossad agents snuck into Argentina in late spring 1960, few people even in other nations’ security apparatuses knew what they were up to. These five had tracked down Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, and they proceeded to abduct him, secret him away and eventually fly him out of Argentina to Israel, where he was summarily executed. The operation caused something of an international firestorm, as well as a major conundrum, for several nations. Argentina was outraged that its sovereignity had been compromised (in much the same way Pakistan got its hackles raised when the United States executed Osama bin Laden), and the United Nations found itself disparaging Israel’s techniques while at the same time having to admit that someone like Eichmann needed to be brought to justice somehow. The Mossad operation to capture Eichmann raised the profile of this normally clandestine group, and it’s obviously at least part of the inspiration behind The Debt, a largely riveting, at times Rashomon-esque, examination of a Mossad operation in the mid-1960s in East Berlin that may or may not have gone down the way it had been portrayed in the subsequent decades.

The Debt makes a fascinating companion piece to Sarah's Key. Both films deal with the ramifications of the Holocaust and its effects on subsequent generations, and both films ping pong back and forth between events long ago in the past and those in the more or less present. Similarly both films play with the vagaries of memory and perception. If Sarah’s Key is perhaps the more personal of the two films, dealing with the intertwined relationship between a Jewish girl in the 1940s (and later) and a contemporary journalist investigating her story, The Debt is a fascinating piece of revisionist history that perhaps surprisingly de-lionizes Mossad, at least with regard to the agents portrayed in the film itself. One might expect something of this tenor from Western filmmakers, ever on the lookout for heroes they can knock off any given pedestal, but the interesting thing here is that The Debt is a remake of a 2007 Israeli film. What this may portend is that Israel has achieved a national maturity of sorts that is allowing it to look back on various historical events with a perhaps less rosy colored pair of glasses, allowing for some introspection and even questioning.

There’s a central conceit to The Debt that makes writing about it without revealing a major plot point difficult if not impossible, but suffice it to say we get the 1966 trio (played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Martin Csokas) playing out against what are largely bookending segments of the same trio (Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds and Tom Wilkinson) in the late 1990s, as a book recounting the trio’s daring exploits in their youth, written by the daughter of Mirren and Wilkinson, is being released. The three older characters seem to be haunted by their past, but is it only because the Mirren character is actually physically scarred from her run-in with the mad doctor who became known as the Surgeon of Birkenau. (It’s somewhat interesting to realize that this character is obviously based on Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor whom Mossad actually had tracked down but who wasn’t apprehended after the furor which was raised by the Eichmann case).

And in fact it’s this central conceit that is The Debt’s biggest problem from a dramatic standpoint. When the 1960s trio makes a fateful decision that will color the rest of their lives, it’s arrived at in an almost cavalier, sanguine fashion that doesn’t rise to the level of conflict it really needs to, especially with regard to the Chastain/Mirren character. This becomes especially apparent in a montage sequence where the ramifications of this decision spill out in the lives of the young trio once they return to Israel. It’s as if this decision is just arrived at willy-nilly, no really thought is given to the consequences, and then the three simply enter the “new life” created by the decision without a second thought. It makes the whole moral questioning aspect of the three in their later life at least somewhat inexplicable, robbing the film of some of what should be its central dramatic power.

If you can get past that rather major obstacle, The Debt is a fascinating study in duplicity and the slow gravitational pull of guilt as it infects the soul over several decades. Though the film was marketed as a traditional thriller, and it certainly has some aspects of that genre (especially with regard to the kidnapping of the Nazi character), The Debt is really a much more ruminative film, one which attempts to peek beneath the veneer of hero worship, especially when that worship may not be warranted. Though Mirren and Wilkinson are the putative stars of this effort, it’s really the 1960s trio that carries the bulk of the film, and their increasing isolation and claustrophobia in East Berlin provides the central dramatic focus that shapes the film’s emotional content.

Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) does an artful job playing the two time periods off of each other, especially once the “facts” are established and we return to the present. If the film is overly melodramatic in a number of ways, Madden attempts to imbue The Debt with a cool sort of rationality that is meant to (ineffectively) tamp down the roiling emotions just beneath the surface. In that regard, Mirren and Wilkinson fully rise to the challenge, though it is perhaps the incredibly doleful eyes of Ciarán Hinds which most fully embody this idea. The Debt never really totally works as either a traditional thriller or as a soap operatic character study, but the interesting thing is as an unusual mélange of styles and genres, it’s really rather involving and provocative. All of us live with memories of things we would have done differently, and while The Debt takes that idea to hyperbolic levels, the universal truth of its focal concept is the film’s most visceral element.

The Debt Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Debt arrives on Blu-ray with a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. This is yet another curiously soft looking presentation from Universal (and Focus Films/Miramax), though at least part of this can be attributed to Madden's deliberate filtering of such sequences as the opening desert segment (which Madden rather incredibly reveals was actually filmed in frigid conditions and was later manipulated in post). A lot of the film is diffuse and just a tad on the fuzzy side, though there are times when fine detail just pops magnificently (look at the screencap of the evil doctor being shaved for a spectacular example). Madden intentionally desaturates quite a bit of the film, as well as filtering other sequences, giving a lot of the film unnatural, but effective, looking color, often with pushed contrast and slightly effulgent back lighting. Overall the Blu-ray looks decently detailed and no doubt represents what Madden was going for, but those who are expecting a razor sharp presentation may find themselves wondering if Universal has dropped the ball yet again.

The Debt Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Debt's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.l mix is incredibly nuanced and surprisingly subtle at times. That becomes evident in one of the first sequences, when we get the first flashback to the 1960s, in the claustrophobic East Berlin apartment the three Mossad agents have squirreled the Doctor away to, an apartment which is in disrepair and suffering from a badly leaking roof. Little "plop, plops" of water into pots fill the left channel first and then migrate over to the right as the camera moves through the rooms with Chastain and the position of various pots changes. The mix here isn't overly boisterous, even in some of the purported "action" sequences like Chastain's capture of the Doctor or, later, a violent showdown involving Mirren late in the film. What is offered instead is incredibly well placed, and more often than not nicely directional, effects that help to create an oppressive atmosphere. Thomas Newman's score is also brilliantly understated and helps immeasurably to create mood throughout the film, and it is very well presented on this track. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented (in a variety of languages, as the Mirren character especially seems to be fluent in just about every imaginable language). Fidelity is superb and dynamic range is excellent.

The Debt Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature Commentary with Director John Madden and Producer Kris Thykier. This is a fairly low key affair that is helmed chiefly by Madden (as is perhaps appropriate), with occasional additions by Thykier. Madden talks about everything from location shooting to such minutiae as whether the film's use of Deutschland über alles will be allowed to play in Germany (where it's forbidden).
• A Look Inside The Debt (HD; 3:17) is a brief promo piece which basically plays like an extended trailer with a few interspersed interviews with the likes of Mirren and Madden.
• Every Secret Has a Price: Helen Mirren in The Debt (HD; 3:16) is another short piece focusing on Mirren and the role she plays. This is basically simply the same set of interview source material as in A Look Inside with slightly different material and film clips.
• The Berlin Affair: The Triangle at the Center of The Debt (HD; 2:18). Three's the charm? Not really— this is yet another short and surface level set of film clips and interviews with Madden and others, focusing on the three main characters.

The Debt Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Debt beautifully plays youthful idealism against older cynicism and guilt, but it does so at the expense of credulity and clear character motivation. This is a film that hinges on a fulcrum that some may find strains suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. If that element can be forgiven, director Madden and co-writers Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan do a mostly artful job of blending some traditional thriller elements into a perhaps more turgid romantic triangle, all tied up within the very emotionally overwrought subject of the Holocaust and Israel's efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. If The Debt isn't completely successful, it still offers some brilliant performances and a very evocative recreation of a moment in time when the post-World War II generation of Israelis attempted to come to terms with their very painful heritage. Recommended.