Israeli Debt Collectors.

With the Summer blockbuster season over and done with, October started to throw out a few smarter movies onto the screens.

One of those movies was The Debt directed by John Madden (no, not that John Madden). Set in a post-war Berlin, three Israeli agents set out to bring justice to their people by capturing Doktor Bernhardt, the Butcher of Birkenau. The mission is an apparent success but decades later it becomes apparent that the agents lied about the death of Bernhardt, failing to admit he’d gotten away. 

The storytelling in this film is done by constantly switching between 1965 and the present, showing the stories unfold simultaneously. The more exciting and dramatic scenes are found in the past, where Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas and Sam Worthington play the three agents. All do a good job though Worthington’s accent is never really here nor there, which is strange as he’s the biggest name of the three. In fact it’s Chastain who’s the real star of the movie, even trumping her future self, played by Helen Mirren.

As a thriller this is a decent film, but it just lacks that extra something to make it really exciting. The constant throwbacks to the past, then the future, then back to the past means the movie loses a little bit of focus and slows it all down. It’s not a boring movie, but it doesn’t leave too much of an impact on you, meaning I have very little to actually say about it.

That’s not to say this is a bad movie though, far from it. It is a decent film, but it just never really hits the high-notes found in other thrillers. The ending is particularly underwhelming and makes very little sense. A hospitalised ninety-odd year old Nazi with the agility of Sonic the Hedgehog for example.

It just never really got me excited, and every time it nearly got there it swept the carpet away, or switched back to the present. I'd probably have been just as satisfied if they made a movie about three scousers trying to take down the Butcher of Birkenhead.

Overall, The Debt was okay. It’s a shoulder-shrug movie but a decent watch nonetheless that signified the ultimate end of the summer’s ridiculous drivel soaked fireworks.

Final Verdict: 3 Stars. Filled with peaks and troughs that starts on a peak and ends in a trough.