The Debt

This excellent Hollywood remake of the terrific Israeli espionage thriller Ha-Hov is a well-structured and intelligent entertainment, more concerned with creating solid characters than with providing audiences with a thrill ride of surprising twists and turns—which is maybe why I liked it so much. The three lead characters, venerated Israeli agents who share a secret about the big mission they all undertook thirty years before the start of the film, are well played in their 50s by Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson; but the film is most potent in its flashbacks to their mission in Berlin, where the characters are played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas and Sam Worthington.

Screenwriters Matthew Vaughn, Kris Thykier, and Edaurdo Rossoff have adapted the original, low-budget suspense film into a big-budget Hollywood thriller quite well, leaving all the key plot points and sequences intact and heightening the stakes in the best kind of ways. Where the Israeli film spent more time inside the safe house with the agents and their prisoner—which is more realistic and more suited to the small-scale nature of that production—the American version expands the narrative to include more big set pieces and exciting plot reversals. The remake also develops each of the three main characters far better than the original. That version focused on the main protagonist, Rachel, making the two male agents a bit interchangeable. The one thing the American version doesn’t do as well is the third act, which is surprising since this is where Hellen Mirren really gets to shine. The ending of the Israeli film is far more satisfying than the remake, perhaps because the original film jumps back and forth in time a lot more, which keeps the focus on the internal life of older Rachel. The remake's more linear structure serves it well until the ending, which feels rushed, though still effective. Both versions are excellent adult-oriented action films.

A stellar cast enriches this first-rate remake of the Israeli espionage thriller Ha-Hov. Director John Madden and the screenwriters make all kinds of significant changes that suit this big-budget telling of three Mossad agents who share a secret about a mission they undertook when they were young.