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REVIEW: The Debt

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The Debt
Directed by: John Madden
Written by: Matthew Vaughen, Jane Goldmen, & Peter Straughan (adapted screenplay) Assaf Bernstein & Ido Rosenblum (original screenplay)
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas

Basic themes of guilt and revenge last a lifetime in The Debt.  It deliberately doesn’t want to be that movie that lets its characters move from one body to the next and forget their brutality.  Nobody is let off the hook; no matter how justified their actions seem in the beginning, at the end your feelings for all of them will likely be mixed.

There are few causes more justified than tracking down an escaped Nazi so they can be put on trial for their crimes.  This is the goal of three young Mossad agents, Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephen (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington), sent to track down an evil Nazi doctor (Jesper Christensen) who performed cruel experiments on prisoners during the war.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: Batman Begins

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Batman Begins
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer (screenplay)
Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, and Katie Holmes

Christopher Nolan goes the route of Stanley Kubrick in his take on the Batman mythology.  Kubrick was infamous for taking acclaimed works of literature and making them his own, just ask Stephen King.  It’s hard to say what Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Batman’s true origin, would say about Nolan’s origin story.  The colorful world is all but stripped away, replaced with the gritty streets of Gotham City and induced with a tinge of noir.

Though he would go on to create a masterpiece in 2008’s The Dark Knight, Nolan needed to establish his version of this world and the principle characters in it.  In that respect he is mostly successful.

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