A Good Old-Fashioned Debt (Weekly Links)

Rhys Ifans, Mr. Nice: Karachi’s Swinging Sixties

Links to reviews I wrote for the Herald, and etc.

The Debt. (dead link; review below)

By Robert Horton

“The Debt” is one of those “Ah-ha!” movies, an otherwise conventional tale that abruptly shifts focus after you get a crucial bit of withheld information.

The question about this kind of film is, does it have a life beyond the “Ah-ha!” moment? Or is this a one-trick pony?

“The Debt” is adapted from an Israeli espionage film, and divides its storytelling over two time periods. After opening in 1997, we spend most of the first hour in East Berlin, 1965, where a trio of Israel’s Mossad agents are searching for a Nazi war criminal. The quarry is a Mengele-like doctor who now works as a gynecologist. This leads to the movie’s creepiest, most suspenseful scenes, as a spy named Rachel (Jessica Chastain) submits to a gynecological exam as a way of observing the doctor.

The doctor is played, expertly, by Jesper Christensen, the Danish actor who played “Mr. White” in the last couple of James Bond pictures. When he blandly says “We need to help you with a little injection” and reaches for the hypodermic needle, it’s far more terrifying than a movie shoot-out. Rachel shares close undercover quarters with her fellow agents Stephen (Martin Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington, from “Avatar”), which leads to tortured personal feelings—especially after the plot to seize the doctor gets complicated.

Thirty years later, Rachel (now played by Helen Mirren) is unexpectedly called to service in connection with this incident. Stephen (Tom Wilkinson) and David (Ciarán Hinds) are still around, too.

Director John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) tries his best to get around the problems that come with a bisected movie like this: just as we get involved in the story with one cast, we switch to a new group of people. Employing Helen Mirren (admirably frosty here) and rising star Jessica Chastain helps keep the thread live, because both actresses are intense. Chastain recently appeared in “Tree of Life” and “The Help” (she was truly launched in Dan Ireland’s “Jolene”), and she’s got pale, waifish looks that belie a fierce commitment to the material.

The movie has possibilities as both an espionage yarn and a comment about the importance of truth and myths in public discourse. Yet it falls short on both counts, partly because of its self-importance and partly because Madden lacks the snap of a born spy-movie guy.

“The Debt” wants to be more than a good Saturday matinee picture, it wants to be a thought-provoker. But you’ll enjoy it best at a Saturday matinee.

A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy. “The yuck factor is a little higher than the ha-ha factor.”

Mr. Nice. “Chronicling the weirdness of it all.”

And a fall-preview thingie.

On KUOW’s “Weekday,” I talk with Marcie Sillman about The Help and its reception; the conversation is archived here. The movie bit kicks in around the 14-minute mark.

At What a Feeling!, we reach back for a review of The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first of a series of films based on Jean M. Auel’s books. Okay, the first and last.