The Debt

In 1965 three young Mossad agents, two guys and Jessica Chastain, are in East Berlin, assigned to kidnap the Surgeon of Birkenau, who experimented on living people in the death camps, and bring him to Israel for trial. He’s working as a gynecologist under another name. (The ploy to get to him involves Jessica visiting for fertility exams. He is empathetic and kind as she has her legs in the stirrups, but even a guy has to wonder just how creepy it must be to have an infamous mass murderer looking up your … well, creepy, okay?) The snatch, so to speak, goes partly wrong, and they end up having to keep him in a crappy apartment for weeks, feeding him, taking him to go potty, etc. They won’t speak to him, but he works on them psychologically. It’s pretty easy for a Nazi to enrage a Jew, and … well, I can’t give too much away. Then we move forward to 1995. Helen Mirren now plays the part Jessica Chastain was playing. She’s being honored for what she did all those years ago. But she and the other two have a terrible secret. I didn’t like the end part nearly as well as the first part. It just didn’t feel right to me. I’d only partially recommend this one.