The Debt (2011) –
The Debt barely got any play when it
came out under the radar last year, which is both a surprise and a shame,
because there’s enough A-list material here – done successfully, to boot – to entertain
most audiences. Parallel narratives reveal
what really happened when three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Sam
Worthington, and Marton Csokas) pursued a fugitive Nazi official (Jesper Christensen)
and how the experience affected them later in life. The older agents are portrayed by “big names”
– Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, and Tom Wilkinson – all of whom turn in their
usual exceptional work; Mirren and Wilkinson find themselves at moral odds over
the truth of their experience, with Wilkinson’s determination matching Mirren’s
internal and external scars. But it’s
Chastain who gives the best performance; granted, she gets the lion’s share of
the film as the younger Rachel, but her work in The Debt proves why she’s a rising star in Hollywood. She is tough and vulnerable, holding her own
against Christensen’s Dr. Vogel (who’s the smarmiest Nazi this side of Ralph
Fiennes in Schindler’s List) as a
proper action heroine while also allowing the audience to see just how
traumatic her encounter is. It’s an
interesting companion piece to Munich,
but director John Madden wisely avoids the preachy moralizing Spielberg
deployed in his 2005 Mossad movie (which, coincidentally, also co-starred
Hinds). It’s hard to believe this is the
same director behind Shakespeare in Love
and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,
since The Debt is more intense and
more severely compelling than those two (not to denigrate either, of course),
smartly playing on the relationship of past to present while brilliantly
leading the audience to several premature conclusions. In short, The
Debt is overwhelmingly underrated.
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
– After 12 Angry Men, I’ll follow
Henry Fonda into any movie, particularly with the expectation that he’ll be
playing a character of similar moral fiber (Juror #8 is, after all, one of
cinema’s best good guys) – even if I’m not the world’s biggest devotee of
westerns. The Ox-Bow Incident, regarded as a classic, stars Fonda as a
drifter suspected of rustling before he gets enfolded into a lynch mob in
pursuit of a trio of suspected murderers.
The “plausible doubt” element (familiar to us 12 Angry Men fans) is of course the central conceit of the film, as
is an interrogation of the validity of vigilante justice (familiar to us Batman
fans). My father rightly pointed out
that the film feels a bit like a Twilight
Zone episode, and I think he’s onto something; the film is sans the
supernatural, but it includes the morality play aspect and the simplistic
cinematography, as well as the cast of character actors in smaller roles. What’s disappointing is that the film feels a
bit like a 22-minute story stretched into 75 minutes, repetitive at times and unfulfilling
in others (as in a hasty subplot involving Fonda’s sweetheart). Perhaps worse, Fonda is criminally underused,
likely due to the size of the large supporting cast. It’s not that the movie is bad – it just isn’t
great. And it suffers by the unfair comparison to 12 Angry Men (which I contend is a
perfect film) that I held in my head the whole time I was watching The Ox-Bow Incident.
That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Happy New Year, loyal readers!
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