The Debt Movie Review

"The Debt" was a wonderful film. The movie kept me very interested the entire time. It is one of the better drama-thriller movies that I've seen throughout my movie ventures. Though a little lengthy, "The Debt" was a very well paced film and it made those 2 hours go by relatively fast. I thought that the movie's plot was a very interesting one. The main plot of "The Debt" was based on a screen play written Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan. It is also a remake of a 2007 Israeli film also named "The Debt" by Assaf Bernstein. The movie is set up so that events from the past are retold that are directly related to the characters present day situation.

The film is about three spies that went on a mission in 1965 in East Berlin. The three spies were Rachel Singer played by Jessica Chastain,  David Peretz  played by Sam Worthington and Stefan Gold played by Marton Csokas. Their mission was to capture the nazi surgeon known as "The Surgeon of Birkenau", for his horrific experiments done on Jews during WWII, and bring him back to Israel to be put on trial for his crimes against humanity. Rachel and David posed as a married couple that have been struggling for the past 2 years to conceive a child but have failed, in order to get close to the doctor who now works in a clinic. Once the "ok" is given by the Israeli government to proceed with the mission the team makes their move on him.

The doctor is kidnapped by the three spies and they attempt to flee the country with his body via train but Rachel's face is seen and they miss the train so they are forced to seek refuge back at their hideout with the doctor. From their the movie has come fantastic dialogue pieces given by the doctor and the rest of the spies. One day the doctor is being fed by David and the former says something to piss him off, David then proceeds to break a ceramic plate across the doctors face and to beat him. After david is restrained by his teammates, piece of the ceramic plate is left behind and the doctor cuts himself loose. The house that they stay in is very old, it was raining and Rachel was putting out pots to catch water from leaks in the room. When Rachel goes to get more pots to catch the water from the leaks, the doctors sneaks up on her and injures her face and then escapes. The spies then agree to tell the rest of the world that while the doctor was trying to escape Rachel crawled and shot him in the back. The movie it basically all of the ramifications from them lying about the mission to the world.

In the movie there is a piano that is played Stefan all the time and this plays a very good role in reflecting on everyone's current mood. When Rachel does not know what to do and is crying Stefan gets on the piano and he plays music that one would usually associate with the emotion "sadness". A book of the spies' mission was written by Rachel's daughter, excerpts of the book have gotten read by both Rachel and her daughter both times it would lead back to a flashback of the 1965 mission, which worked very well because that first time they did it, it showed Rachel successfully killing the doctor as it was written in the book. Later in the movie though a flashback is had from Rachel's own mind and the truth is revealed. This was an excellent plot twist. I think the organization of the film itself was a very good one, and by having that story told through two different mediums that allowed for even more room for them to do that.

The set up for the movie can be seen as the first couple of scenes where it is made known that there was a mission and what had happened during. The first scene is one of the three spies coming home after the mission and being greeted by their countries officials. The first plot point is when the character David his modern day older self was about to go meet someone but instead jumps in front of a moving truck killing himself. This immediately should raise many questions. Act 2 begins when Stefan informs Rachel that David has now killed himself. From there a flashback of how the mission actually happened begins, during that time plot point 2 happens which would be the spies failing to escape the country with the doctor. Act 3 begins back is actual time when Stefan tells Rachel that David he found the doctor and he couldn't live with this life long lie which is why he killed himself. David is in a wheelchair so he tells Rachel that she needs to deal with the problem, meaning kill the doctor. Reluctant to do so at first she then leaves to go find the doctor in a nursing home. He finds her while she's there and she is stabbed two times by him but she was able to inject him with something that kills him. The aftermath of the film from the characters is that Rachel and David eventually realize that they cannot continue to lie to the world and that right thing to be done, is to tell the truth. Stefan however still has his world views from 30 years ago and still believes that they should continue to lie.