The Debt (2010)

Remake of a 2007 Israeli film called Ha-Hov. 

In 1965, three young Mossad agents attempt to capture a Nazi war criminal called Dieter Vogel. Their plans go wrong and he escapes. The agents choose to give a false account of what happened and live with that lie permanently. That is, until Vogel shows up 30 years later and their deception risks being exposed. 

This is an excellent drama that successfully tells parallel stories separated by three decades. It’s centred on Rachel, who is believably played by Jessica Chastain in the 1960s scenes and Helen Mirren in the 1990s sequences. Sam Worthington and Ciarán Hinds both play David Peretz, while Marton Csokas and Tom Wilkinson both play Stefan Gold.

Jesper Christensen is suitably creepy as the so-called “Surgeon of Birkenau”.

The Debt asks deep questions about morality, and the plot is pleasingly unpredictable. It's scary, too.

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

War film directed by Mel Gibson. It tells the true story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who served as a medic in World War II. A Seventh-day Adventist Christian, Doss saved 75 lives during the Battle of Okinawa by returning again and again to tend to wounded US soldiers abandoned where they had fallen.

Andrew Garfield is sympathetic as the religious young man who will not compromise his principles by picking up a gun. Teresa Palmer and Hugo Weaving are watchable as Doss’s wife Dorothy and his troubled, alcoholic father. 

It’s compelling stuff. The battle scenes are brutal and all-too-convincingly real-looking. If there’s a flaw it’s that the Japanese are generally treated as a faceless enemy, although the film eventually addresses this by showing Doss helping victims on the other side as well. It’s not morally simplistic, either. The story addresses the irony that despite the strength of his principles, his life is nevertheless saved by men using guns. 

I didn't like the introduction of real interview footage at the very end. Either dramatise the story or make a documentary about it. Why blend the two? The same trick was used to equally jarring effect in Downfall. Also, on reading up on the story I was a little disappointed to learn that a key scene in which the young Doss nearly kills his father never actually happened. The facts are remarkable enough that there was no need to make things up.