The Debt: Helen Mirren Hunts Nazis

Laurie Sparham/Focus Features

Chastain as Nazi hunter.

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Seven Gables

911 N.E. 50th St.
Seattle, WA 98105

Category: Movie Theaters

Region: University District

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Opens at Seven Gables and other theaters, Wed., Aug. 31. Rated R. 113 minutes.

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More About

• The Debt (Movie)
• Sam Worthington
• Tel Aviv
• Marton Csokas
• Jessica Chastain

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A remake of the far more brisk 2007 Israeli film with a bullpen of aging stars, this rather old-fashioned espionage drama seems deftly engineered to please the middlebrow minions allergic to superheroes and vampires. It's hardly a challenging film, though not for lack of strain, bouncing between 1997, when scar-faced Mossad agent Helen Mirren endures some autumnal glory in Tel Aviv, and 1965, when, embodied by a wispy Jessica Chastain, she joins a team (Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas) intent on kidnapping a famous Nazi butcher (Jesper Christensen) passing as an East Berlin gynecologist. The rhythms of The Debt are emphatic and obvious, but at least the Israeli cult of heroism gets a side-swipe fuck-you, and the loaded thought of vaginal exams administered by a Birkenau mutilator is exploited for everything it's worth, especially when one exam explodes into a leg-lock fight to the near-death. The leading cast, strangely Jew-free, is all uncomplicated angst and brow-furrows, except for Worthington, who as always suggests a linebacker waiting for the whistle. Predictably, the holes in the narrative set us up for a twist or three, but on balance it's a pleasure to be back in the wet alleys and spy-patrolled streets of the GDR, however vague they seem without '60s black-and-white cinematography.