Lies and deceit: Mirren shines in 'The Debt'

The Debt weaves a tangled web of lies and deceptions around a seemingly heroic raid in 1965 carried out by three agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency known for more ability than it exhibits here. Their mission: Enter East Berlin with secret identities, kidnap a Nazi war criminal, and return him to Israel for trial. He is Vogel (Jesper Christensen), the notorious Surgeon of Birkenau, who conducted unspeakable procedures on his captives.

The film opens with the agents being welcomed on their return home to Israel. They are David (Sam Worthington), Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain, of The Tree of Life) and Stefan (Marton Csokas). In scenes set in 1997, they will be played by Ciaran Hinds, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. The later scenes involve the publication of a book about the famous raid by Rachel's daughter. The original raiders are being honored at a banquet, and seem uneasy with each other.

Not everything in the book is quite as it seems. Recent developments in the Ukraine have cast doubt on the now legendary intelligence operation, which would cast the Mossad in the unfortunate light of either not knowing or not admitting what really happened in 1965. That's intriguing for us because "The Debt" does a splendid job of showing key early sequences in detail. To see is to believe. But we may not see everything.