Movie Blather

Yesterday I was going to post my own memory of 9/11/01. But it so paled in comparison to those who actually experienced it, I decided to watch the memorial instead.


Then, to cheer up a bit, I went to the movies (AGAIN) and saw THE DEBT.







I mean, it's Helen Mirren, right?


Please. I gave it a B-minus because it kept my interest, i.e. I didn't snore through half the film. But about 2/3 of the way through I thought, Isn't this about over yet? That's never a good sign. Not with a movie. Not with a book.



I will try to avoid spoliers, but what is a spoiler to you might not be a spoiler to me, lol.


My # 1 problem was that there was no character development. The movie was driven by the plot and nothing else. Who were these three people who wanted to capture the Nazi doctor? We knew they were Jewish, that they lost family in the Holocaust.


But WHO. WERE. THEY? I had no fricking idea, which made it really, really hard to care what happened to them.


# 2: Who was this Nazi doctor? OK, anyone can guess that he was based on Josef Mengele. Near the beginning, one character skimmed through a few photos of children's corpses, presumably victims of the doctor's vicious experiments. We get no further look into what this doctor actually did, or who HE was. I'm not saying we needed another half-hour of flashbacks detailing this man's crimes. But, for me, a couple of photos didn't do it. He was OBVIOUSLY evil, and that certainly came through, so maybe the writers didn't feel it necessary to add anything else. It's just that I felt no connection to these photos; they seemed almost incidental. Frankly, given the lack of anything else to make me hate this doctor--aside from my knowledge of history and the doctor's repellent personality--the pics themselves could've been left out.


# 3: I am SO SURE anyone would believe a demented old man in a mental hospital when he says he is the Butcher of Buchenwald--let alone a journalist who, like everyone else IN THE WHOLE FREAKING WORLD, believes the doctor was killed back in 1965.


# 4: The older versions of the male characters looked nothing like the younger versions. Worse, the two guys kind of looked alike to me. Fire the casting director.


# 5: The chick (in the apartment) had a GUN. Why didn't she keep it handy? Stupid, and not very believable considering who she was, what she was trying to accomplish, and who her prisoner was. She's no Clarice Starling, that's for sure.


# 5: I found last 15 minutes of the film to be totally unbelievable.



Still, I watched it, was mostly not bored, and if you like thriller/espionage/post-Holocaust films with Helen Mirren and a couple of plot holes, go see it. :)