Debt, The (Blu-ray) (2010)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Audio Commentary-Director John Madden & Producer Kris Thykier Featurette-A Look Inside The Debt Featurette-Every Secret Has Its Price: Helen Mirren in The Debt Featurette-The Berlin Affair: Triangle at the Centre of The Debt
Rating
Year Of Production	2010
Running Time	113:21
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John Madden
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Helen Mirren Tom Wilkinson Ciarán Hinds Romi Aboulafia Tomer Ben David Ohev Ben David Jonathan Uziel Eli Zohar Irén Bordán
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	?	Music	Thomas Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 Spanish dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) French dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) German dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) Italian dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Spanish Danish German French Icelandic Italian Dutch Norwegian Finnish Swedish Mandarin Cantonese Korean	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Tel Aviv, Israel, 1997. Journalist Sarah Gold (Romi Aboulafia) launches a book about how a Mossad team consisting of her mother Rachel (Helen Mirren), her father Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) and David (Ciaran Hinds) had in 1965 been sent to East Berlin to identify a man believed to be the Nazi war criminal, the Nazi Surgeon of Birkenau, to abduct him and get him back to Israel for trial. The abduction had been successful but the planned exit had gone awry. Then their captive had tried to escape, injuring Rachel in the process, but Rachel had recovered sufficiently to shoot him dead. The Mossad team returned to Israel to be feted and treated as heroes for 30 years.

     On the day of the book launch David commits suicide. It seems the truth is not quite that simple; a journalist in Kiev, the Ukraine, has claimed on the internet that a psychiatric patient in an asylum there is the infamous Nazi surgeon!

     East Berlin, 1965. Rachel (now played by Jessica Chastain) joins Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) on her first mission for the Mossad. Rachel and David are to pretend to be a married couple trying to have a baby so she can attend the fertility clinic run by Doktor Bernhardt (Jesper Christensen) who is suspected by the Israelis of being the infamous Surgeon of Birkenau who conducted heinous medical experiments upon prisoners and Jews for the Nazis. When Rachel confirms the Doktor is indeed the wanted man, the team abduct him and attempt to get him to West Berlin, but the plan goes badly amiss and they are forced to take him back to their safe house until a new exit route can be established. As the days stretch into weeks in the confined apartment, the Doktor plays mind games with his three captors while the jealousy and sexual tension between the three intensifies until the real story of the attempted escape is revealed. But this again is only part of the story and, back in 1997 again, Rachel must go to Kiev where there is another, final, twist to the tale.

     The Debt is based upon the 2007 Israeli Hebrew language film Ha-Hov, directed by Assaf Bernstein. Director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love (1998) The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)) in The Debt has crafted a tense, intelligent, claustrophobic espionage thriller that could almost be based upon a play as the pivotal events of the film occur within the confines of the team’s safe house in East Berlin, where the tensions between the three are exacerbated by the manipulation and mind games of their hostage. Even when the film opens out into the present (1997 anyway) it still remains focussed on the three and their tensions. Indeed, it is the interplay of the different time periods, where the “truth” is revealed as scenes are replayed from different perspectives, and the fact that the Mossad operatives of 1997 are trapped in a lie, just as they are earlier trapped in the safe house, that gives the film its interest.

     The Debt has an excellent cast and the women, Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain, are particularly strong. Of the men, Marton Csokas was also excellent, but I feel that the casting of the 1997 section was the wrong way around. To me Marton Csokas looked and sounded like a younger version of Ciaran Hinds while the round face and features of Sam Worthington match with the round face and features of Tom Wilkinson, so much so that when the casting was the other way around I had to check my cast list to make sure I didn’t have it wrong! Perhaps it was just me.

     The Debt is not an action film as such, although the action sequences are tense, brutal and well directed. Instead, The Debt is an intelligent, well-constructed, claustrophobic espionage thriller with an excellent cast, good locations in Budapest (doubling for 1960’s East Berlin) and a twist in the end. At 113 minutes, it does not waste a second and is very watchable.

Video

     The Debt is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, the original aspect ratio being 2.35:1, in 1080p using the MPEG-4 AVC code.

     The print is sharp and nicely detailed. Colours vary: the Tel Aviv scenes are deliberately bright while the Berlin scenes are much duller, with a blue / grey colour scheme. Inside the apartment, the colour palate is very brown and dark, enhancing the claustrophobic feel of the film. Blacks are fine, but this darker palate in the Berlin sequences means that sometimes the shadow detail within the apartment can be indistinct. Within these colour schemes, skin tones were fine, contrast and brightness consistent. Other than occasional aliasing on vertical lines, such as the railing at 5:02, and some minor ghosting with movement, artefacts were absent. There was also more grain evident than I might have expected, but the effect was not unpleasing.

     Subtitles are available in a diverse range of European and Asian languages. White clear English subtitles come on automatically to translate the German and Russian sections of dialogue.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio track options are English DTS-HD MA 5.1 at 2085 Kbps, plus French, Italian, German and Spanish DTS 5.1 (at 768 Kbps). There is also an English audio commentary track and an English audio description track, both Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192 Kbps.

     The English DTS- HD MA 5.1 is a very good, atmospheric audio track. Dialogue is clear and centred. The surrounds are used constantly for music and ambient sound, such as crowds and rain, but the best use comes from the sounds that create tension, such as the water dripping from the roof of the safe house in Berlin into the buckets on the floor. Gunshots have nice resonance. The sub-woofer is not overused, but provides appropriate bass to music, train sounds and the crashes and thumps in the fight.

     The original score by Thomas Newman is interesting, and very effective in adding to the moods and tension of the film.

     Lip synchronisation was fine.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     The extras look more substantial than they are with an audio commentary and three very minor featurettes. These three featurettes are EPK and even though short repeat much the same film footage and information.

A Look Inside The Debt (3:17)

     The plot explained in brief: film footage and interview material with the main cast and director.

Every Secret has a Price: Helen Mirren in The Debt (3:17)

     More of the same, but concentrating on the character of Rachel.

The Berlin Affair: The Triangle at the Centre of The Debt (2:19)

     More, this time on the love triangle.

Commentary: Director John Madden and Producer Kris Thykier

     Director John Madden and producer Kris Thykier provide a fairly dry commentary, with a some hesitations, that is not without interest. Madden provides the majority of the comments which include only a little technical information; instead they mention the original Israeli film, locations and casting, and speak a lot about plot and character points.

     This is a Universal Blu-ray release that looks to be the same worldwide.

     The Debt is an intelligent, well-constructed, claustrophobic espionage thriller with an excellent cast, good locations in Budapest and a twist in the end.

     The Blu-ray looks and sounds good. Extras are not extensive, but are the same worldwide.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall