By Mark HadleyMonday 7 Nov 2011MoviesReading Time: 2 minutes
The Debt
Rating: M
Distributor: Universal
Release Date: November 10
Films have often wondered how far a person might go in the pursuit of justice. Munich tracked the operations of a Jewish hit squad responsible for killing off enemies of the state. Batman shows a super hero bending rules to the point of breaking so that evil can be contained. Now Helen Mirren teams with Australian Sam Worthington to bring a true story about the hunt for Nazi war criminals to the big screen, and the personal cost justice requires.
Rachel Singer (Mirren), is a former Mossad agent who endeavoured to capture a notorious Nazi war criminal – the Surgeon of Birkenau – in a secret Israeli mission that ended with his death. Now, 30 years later, a man claiming to be the doctor has surfaced, and Rachel must go back to Eastern Europe to uncover the truth. This is a tale well suited to older audiences, particularly those with an interest in social justice and the Second World War.
If there is one feeling our society would like to do away with, it would have to be guilt. In an age dedicated to the rights of the individual, it seems that any attempt to increase shame for our behaviour is likely to fall foul of the politically correct. Certainly one of the most difficult to swallow sessions associated with a Christianity Explored course I run is the one that “… all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The Debt acknowledges evil, but doesn’t limit it to Nazis. It discovers guilt in the heart of even the most heroic human beings. While dealing with the evil of the man she hunts, Rachel Singer has to acknowledge the potential for evil in her own heart. And in God’s eyes, both Nazis and Nazi-hunters are in need of a solution.