Sometimes, a non-linear storyline serves a purpose. It can unravel a mystery piece by piece and keep the audience guessing. Sometimes, it just appears contrived. In The Debt, the non-linear storyline revealed how a trio of ex-Mossad agents had been living a lie since a seemingly high-profile arrest of a Nazi war criminal. The narrative gimmick also caused the film to drag, separating a clichéd spy story from a more interesting drama.
The cast who portrays the characters in the current day are compelling, although barely featured. One of the premises of the film is that the lies told by the agents over the course of thirty years have been tried their moral compasses and tested their personal values. It would have be intriguing to see Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds delve into the roles and their relationships with each other. Unfortunately, these current scenes are kept to a minimum, a shame since these experienced cast members do more in brief scenes than their younger counterparts accomplish in hours on camera.
The film would have worked better if structured as two equal and intertwined stories. Keeping the opening sequence as is, Madden could have established parallels between the search for Nazi war criminal Vogel in the 1960s and the 1990s. Anyone who read a synopsis of The Debt understands that Vogel escaped initially although the agents took credit for killing him. As more subtle and nuanced investigations thirty years apart were chronicled, the audience would also see the interaction between the three main characters.
The film cannot decide whether it should be a spy action film or a drama. It selected the more accessible alternative, losing gravitas as a result. The spy genre is overdone so reporting on a covert operation – past or present – is not a novel approach. Life in East Berlin appear authentic (there is no comparison between the action scenes in Torn Curtain and this film) but there is no significance. It could have been anywhere and in the end, it’s meaningless.
On one hand, The Debt would have the audience believe that the Mossad agents have been traumatized because of their years of deception. On the other, details of this trauma are reduced to a brief voiceover, a corny turn of phrase and a muddled conclusion. **