The Debt is entertaining enough – it’s not a terrible movie. But it really disappointed me and failed to leave me with much of anything. It’s really very average.  It’s just an average, Hollywoody political action film,  one that suffers from some serious and fundamental flaws.

First, I am not a big fan of the parallel past/present narratives approach taken in this film. In fact, I can’t think of a really good film that uses this storytelling technique. Some great films have used flashbacks – Missing, for example – but telling two parallel stories in different time periods always strikes me as a bit of an artistic cop-out.

One result of the two storyline approach is that they wind up skipping the setup for the main part of the story (the kidnapping of the surgeon of Birkenau.) The viewer is just plunged into the action, and all we get are a few mumbled lines like “we finally found him, now we’ll show the world what he did,” and a decent-but-minimal sequence describing the plan to escape to West Berlin with the surgeon. If they had bothered to write a proper set up, it would have included things like the following: How many years did it take to find the surgeon, and how did they track him down (since he was openly practicing as a doctor in the middle of fucking Berlin, the layers of deception that kept him hidden must have been intricate and fascinating – why not explain it to us?) Who were the two agents already in the field that she was joining – how long had they been there, what were their histories, what was their operational relationship to each other, and what exactly had they accomplished since going to East Berlin? What were the details of her mission, and what was her background (for instance, if she really was a translator then why did she fight so incredibly well?) What was the extent of the supporting network in East Berlin available to help the three conspirators? And how about a little more information about what this “surgeon” actually did?!

A well-written 10-20 minute section with information like this would have given the movie a lot of badly needed texture, the kind of texture that makes you want to watch a movie again. As a point of comparison, think about The Day of the Jackle and its absolutely masterful set up during the first 10-20 minutes – think about all of the texture and interest that is generated during that set up, and how it carries forward through the entire film. Its setup is one of the big reasons that you never get tired of watching it. The Debt has none of this, and it’s one reason why the film is kind of boring and one-dimensional.

On top of this problem of no set-up we have the additional and rather common problem that they didn’t write enough dialog. The main result of this is that the pivotal character of David, played by Sam Worthington, simply did not work at all. I know he’s supposed to be a man of mystery, but you have to convey the mysteriousness in a compelling and coherent way! The character of David is just a blank space, and Worthington was badly miscast, as he has no warmth and charisma to fill in the blank where interesting dialog should have been. The implied love story between him and Jessica Chastain fell completely flat, and since a lot of the important action in the film is based on the feeling between these two it’s no wonder that the film leaves you a little cold and disappointed. I didn’t even believe that David was a warrior zealot. I didn’t believe anything about him, except that he did not seem like a Mossad agent at all. The character of David and its casting was a huge problem.

An additional problem: I simply do not believe that the surgeon of Birkenau would have turned into Hannibal Lecter when they took him hostage. I don’t believe it for one second! I think he would have been a dour German soldier and would have kept his mouth shut. The whole Hannibal Lecter thing was manipulative and silly, and a terrible artistic decision, because it distracts from much more interesting elements of the story.

Finally, the ending of this film is just lame and stupid and makes no sense. I’m not going to spoil it, and I’m sure many people will disagree with me, but there you have it.

Basically I think the overall problem with the film beyond the structural complaints listed above is that the film made no effort to tell a story well. Instead, it is content to waste all the machinery of a political espionage thriller to explore (in a simplistic and boring way) the relatively uninteresting idea that “you shouldn’t tell a lie.” It’s George Washington and the fucking cherry tree all over again. Surely they could have done something better with all this!

I should mention some good things about the film. I also thought that the action scene when they try to smuggle the guy out via the subway station that was accidentally left behind the Berlin Wall was quite good – not great, but quite good. And I like the people in the film. Jessica Chastain is a really amazing actress. She certainly has range – I was stunned to find out that she was the same person who played the blonde ditz in The Help! I will definitely be watching for her movies in the future. Tom Winkinson continues to strike me as one of the top five actors out there, male or female. He might not have a ton to do in this film, but he has this knack of making something out of almost nothing that is simply remarkable. And that fellow who played the young Stephan (Marton Csokas) is really underrated, in my opinion. He’s like a Euro Russell Crowe. I wish he was in more films! And Helen Mirren is solid and classy as always. They had a really good cast assembled (except for Worthington) but unfortunately it was in the service of really mediocre material.

The Debt: entertaining, but far from great.