26 Dec The Debt
The Debt, Holocaust film starring Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain
(2011) In 1966 three Mossad agents come together to capture “The Surgeon of Birkenau,” an escaped Nazi war criminal who was living in East Berlin as an OB-GYN physician.
Immediately I thought of Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel of Death at Auschwitz, who did inhuman medical experiments on the camp inmates, in particular on identical twins. Mengele escaped to South American after the war and was never apprehended.
In The Debt, the fiction demon doctor’s name is Dieter Vogel. The tale is actually a remake of the 2007 Israeli film, Ha-Hov (translated also to The Debt.)
Even though in the beginning I was very confused about which male agent was which … they looked so much alike, and the scenes kept switching from 1997 to 1997, back and forth. Even though at the end I had an eery sense of Hannibal Lecter revisited … The Debt is a thrill to watch, particularly the 1966 scenes in East Berlin. That man needs to go.
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