The first hour of The Debt suggested that this movie was going to be another Manichean moral tale with the good Mossad agents tracking down the evil Nazi so that he could be brought to justice. The tone and quality were reminiscent of something from Lifetime TV channel. It seemed overly heavy and super serious and more educational than entertaining. Which is not to say that movies relating to the Holocaust and its aftermath should be a barrel of laughs. (I, for one, found Life is Beautiful to be highly distasteful and inappropriate.)
Because this movie was so slow moving, I actually saved the second half for the following night. That's already a red flag: not a fast-paced suspense thriller. In fact, The Debt does not really become a thriller until the second half of the film, when it finally emerges that what we really have here is an essay on truth and lies. The dominant theme becomes an examination of what the fear of sullying one's reputation can drive one to do. At this juncture, the potential for something wonderful and profound suddenly comes into view. I was fully prepared to forgive and forget the plodding opening in anticipation of what was yet to come.
Unfortunately, the final quarter of the movie takes a turn for the worse, descending ultimately into something close to a slasher genre film. A senescent slasher genre film, to be more precise, given the advanced age of the protagonists. Really, the gore is completely overdone and the circumstances which conspire to make the gore possible are utterly preposterous.
The primary positive take away from this production was that it did not fulfill its initial Manichean promise, thankfully. The human-all-too-human quality of Mossad agents and Nazis alike is highlighted rather than the childish "We are good, and they are evil" trope, of which I, for one, have had quite enough.
A couple of final technical gripes: Jessica Chastain's accent was annoying, and as far as I know microformat cameras did not exist in the 1960s. Did they plug that little SIM-card-sized device into a laptop computer to retrieve the necessary data? Don't think so.
Because this movie was so slow moving, I actually saved the second half for the following night. That's already a red flag: not a fast-paced suspense thriller. In fact, The Debt does not really become a thriller until the second half of the film, when it finally emerges that what we really have here is an essay on truth and lies. The dominant theme becomes an examination of what the fear of sullying one's reputation can drive one to do. At this juncture, the potential for something wonderful and profound suddenly comes into view. I was fully prepared to forgive and forget the plodding opening in anticipation of what was yet to come.
Unfortunately, the final quarter of the movie takes a turn for the worse, descending ultimately into something close to a slasher genre film. A senescent slasher genre film, to be more precise, given the advanced age of the protagonists. Really, the gore is completely overdone and the circumstances which conspire to make the gore possible are utterly preposterous.
The primary positive take away from this production was that it did not fulfill its initial Manichean promise, thankfully. The human-all-too-human quality of Mossad agents and Nazis alike is highlighted rather than the childish "We are good, and they are evil" trope, of which I, for one, have had quite enough.
A couple of final technical gripes: Jessica Chastain's accent was annoying, and as far as I know microformat cameras did not exist in the 1960s. Did they plug that little SIM-card-sized device into a laptop computer to retrieve the necessary data? Don't think so.