October 2, 2011
What a pile of pants. The Debt is horrible, and yet at the same time boring. There is absolutely no development of the central dilemma, nor of the characters and since the film spans a 30 year period this is rather obvious. Someone having a child is not the same as character development.
The setup involves a lot of zipping back and forth in time. It's a shame therefore that they haven't bothered with any kind of period feel, so the sequences in East Berlin in the 60s have no flavour of the time. The present day segments are presumably set in Israel, and the English speech really Hebrew, but this is never very clear either.
The plot gives away its big moment in the first 10 minutes, and then gives way to a series of cliches. There's no buildup towards the end, just inevitable blundering in that direction, like someone wading their way to an exit through light smog.
Perhaps the lazy decision makers on this film felt it couldn't be criticised because it was about Israel getting its own back on the nasty nazis. I'm afraid it takes more than that to sell a film, especially when it's been done before and done better. In fact if there ever was a lesson in why people whose families suffered in concentration camps shouldn't become Mossad agents to avenge them, this was it. Perhaps the novel it's based on is a study in revenge, which might be quite interesting, and give meaning to an otherwise pointless denouement.
The people beside us didn't seem to be enjoying it either, as they kept having to explain to each other who the characters were. Seriously guys, that ad about phone breaks was a JOKE.
All in all, we had to go home and watch Hotshots to take our minds off the depressing waste of money and decent actors that was the sum of this film. How anyone can dislike Tinker Tailor when this pap is the alternative beats me.
The setup involves a lot of zipping back and forth in time. It's a shame therefore that they haven't bothered with any kind of period feel, so the sequences in East Berlin in the 60s have no flavour of the time. The present day segments are presumably set in Israel, and the English speech really Hebrew, but this is never very clear either.
The plot gives away its big moment in the first 10 minutes, and then gives way to a series of cliches. There's no buildup towards the end, just inevitable blundering in that direction, like someone wading their way to an exit through light smog.
Perhaps the lazy decision makers on this film felt it couldn't be criticised because it was about Israel getting its own back on the nasty nazis. I'm afraid it takes more than that to sell a film, especially when it's been done before and done better. In fact if there ever was a lesson in why people whose families suffered in concentration camps shouldn't become Mossad agents to avenge them, this was it. Perhaps the novel it's based on is a study in revenge, which might be quite interesting, and give meaning to an otherwise pointless denouement.
The people beside us didn't seem to be enjoying it either, as they kept having to explain to each other who the characters were. Seriously guys, that ad about phone breaks was a JOKE.
All in all, we had to go home and watch Hotshots to take our minds off the depressing waste of money and decent actors that was the sum of this film. How anyone can dislike Tinker Tailor when this pap is the alternative beats me.