“The Debt” opens in 1950s Israel with three young Jewish Mossad agents – Rachel, Stephan and David – returning home after a covert operation in East Berlin. Their job was to capture the elusive Dieter Vogel, the “Surgeon of Buchenau,” and bring him to Israel to stand trial for his crimes against humanity. Years later, the daughter of Rachel and Stephan authors a book celebrating their mission: Vogel’s capture, the botched attempt to smuggle him out of East Berlin on a train, hiding him in their apartment for weeks and eventually, as he tried to escape, killing him. But the truth is not so simple. Rather, it’s a secret the three have kept for years. Now, after decades of living a lie, the truth threatens to get out, and only Rachel has the power to silence it forever.

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The film is based on a 2007 Israeli movie by the same name, and adapted by the writers of “Kick-Ass” and “X-Men: First Class” (Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman) with help from Peter Straughan who wrote the screenplay for “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” Their experience at adaptation shows, as “The Debt” is a beautifully crafted story blending events from East Berlin in the 1950s with Israel in the 1990s.

Like his previous films “Proof” and “Shakespeare in Love,” director John Madden’s latest features a powerful female in a male-dominated world (mathematics, 16th Century England, espionage), where being a woman is both an asset and liability. Rachel is the newest addition to the Mossad sleeper cell hunting Vogel, and her presence in their cramped apartment headquarters immediately adds tension. She is also perhaps the most important member of the group: she must visit Vogel’s women’s clinic, verify his identity and drug him. It’s a significant task for a first-time field agent and Jessica Chastain (who recently appeared in “The Help” and “Tree of Life,” which I haven’t seen) as the young Rachel conveys a delicate balance of vulnerable femininity and cunning agent – perfect for the character. As an older Rachel, Helen Mirren is significantly different from her “RED” ex-agent, less confident and snarky, more fragile, with a greater sense of duty. Tom Wilkinson and Marton Csokas as Stephan/young Stephan are both forceful and charming when it serves them, an ambitious, likable Mossad mission leader who quickly sours as the mission deteriorates. Sam Worthington as the young David gives a fine quiet performance, subdued and timid with brief explosions of anger. Most of his characters have been pretty emotionless, so it’s nice to see a more expressive side of him.

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Give the military-industrial complex an unlimited budget, and it’ll find unlimited ways to kill people. From megaton nuclear missiles to Donald Rumsfeld’s allegedly humane, small-scale nuclear “bunker busters,” and from robot soldiers to Barack Obama’s beloved predator drone planes, our nation’s finest scientific minds will find ever-newer ways to obliterate anything that gets in the path of the American Way. 

Of course, our enemies do the best they can on the killing front as well, and at one point it was widely believed that the Soviets were engaged in training soldiers in psychic warfare. British journalist Jon Ronson stumbled across America’s response to those mental-murder programs and wrote about them extensively in his humorous nonfiction book “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” 

Now, with the help of screenwriter Peter Straughan, who has invented a streamlined story in which to connect the book’s hilarious and almost impossibly wild anecdotes, “Goats” has hit the nation’s movie screens. Fast-moving, funny, and supremely subversive entertainment of a kind that Hollywood rarely takes chances with anymore, it also arrives at a rich historical moment, as President Obama’s own decision on whether to surge or pull troops out of Afghanistan hangs in the imminent balance.  (more…)