Year: 2010
Director: John Madden
Written by: Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan (based on the 2007 film 'Ha-Hov')
Starring: Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Ciarán Hinds, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Jesper Christensen, Romi Aboulafia.
Running time: 113 min.
Right, the time has come: you may as well call me a hipster. I saw the original movie of The Debt, a small Israeli film made in 2007, before I saw the remake. I know, I made a choice so obscure that I should probably be wearing my hipster flag out and proud - but for now, I'd like to call it a good choice on my part by delving into the shallow waters of the preview drawer. Usually, there is just a flood of needlessly violent and cheaply gruesome horrors, or action movies starring Z-list 'actors'. At first, The Debt looked a little like that. But going in 'blind' led to some good results.
These results, though, were some that - dare I say - could have been improved on. I don't want to put anything indelicately, but better production values and a little more money could have turned a solid movie into an extremely good one. With a who's who of British screen-writing team (Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan), Shakespeare in Love director John Madden at the helm and a cast headlined by the always wonderful Helen Mirren, this remake is not one that we can dismiss as a 'copy-cat crap'. Trust me, I know - I'm a 'hipster'.
