The Debt (2010) - The Nazi war criminal thriller is back in a welcome return

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The slick but not very informative poster for John Madden's The Debt

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In 1965 the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad sent three agents to East-Berlin to assassinate an infamous Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Nuremberg, who was then a practicing gynecologist.

The Debt lifts the rich inheritance from Nazi war criminal thrillers like The Marathon Man (1976) and The Boys from Brazil (1978) without the elements of diamonds, clones or wild car chases from those films, but instead with a sober and intense story, SPOILER which ends as an uncompromising defense for truth in all contexts.
The film could have benefited from an opening text about East-Berlin and that Mossad had just localized the Surgeon there, and there are also some difficulties in seeing all the well-known actors as Jews, - but, more importantly, they all do well. Particularly Helen Mirren (The Last Station (2009)), who simply becomes her character here, but also Jessica Chastain (The Martian (2015)) and Jesper Christensen (Spectre (2015)), who is icy as the Nazi war criminal, mixing psychopathic diabolism with rationality and sympathetic qualities.
The Debt is a remake of the Israeli The Debt/Ha-Hov (2007), written by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass (2010)), Jane Goldman (Stardust (2007)) and Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)), and directed by great English filmmaker John Madden (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)). It is an attractive, good film.

Related review:

John Madden: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) - Elderly Brits me in India in Madden's delightful film

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 45.6 mil. $
= Flop
[The film premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival in France September 4 and runs 113 minutes. The Debt was finished and ready for release in July 2010, but due to the sale of distributor Miramax, the North American release was delayed until August 31 2011. The film opened #2 to 9.9 mil. $ in North America, where it grossed 31.1 mil. $ (68.2 % of the total gross.) The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 4.6 mil. $ (10.1 %) and the UK with 2.3 mil. $ (5 %). The Debt is certified fresh at 76 % with a 6.5 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

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This Must Be the Place (2011) - Sorrentino's Nazi-hunting stoner cracker

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The art designer of this poster for Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place might have gone for the look of one of the album covers of the band The Cure, whose front man Robert Smith, Sean Penn's look in the film is inspired by

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Retired rock-veteran Cheyenne does nothing at home in Ireland, when his father dies and he sets out to find the old Nazi, who humiliated his old man decades ago in Auschwitz.

Sean Penn (Milk (2008)), Frances McDormand (Fargo (1996)) and other actors do well here in Paolo Sorrentino's (Il Divo/Il Divo: La Spettacolare Vita di Giulio Andreotti (2008)) English-language debut, which gets its title from a classic song by Talking Heads, which David Byrne (Lulu on the Bridge (1998)) performs in the film in its probably most memorable scene.
The structure of the story, written by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello (The Great Beauty/La Grande Bellezza (2013)), is offbeat, just as the protagonist. Unfortunately its ending was, to me, very unsatisfying.

Related reviews:

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Paolo Sorrentino: The Caiman/Il Caimano (2006) - Moretti's unfunny political comedy - strictly for Italians (actor)

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 28 mil. $
Box office: 11.6 mil. $
= Huge flop
[This Must Be the Place was an Italian majority production with co-producers from Ireland and France. It premiered in 2012 in North America to an incredibly paltry 0.1 mil. $ result (just 1 % of the total gross!) It was a big hit in Sorrentino's native Italy, where it made 6.1 mil. €. He is such a hot ticket in Europe at the moment that the flop didn't hurt his career much: Especially because he followed it up with the Best Foreign Film Oscar winner The Great Beauty (2013).]

What do you think of This Must Be the Place?

The Dirty Dozen (1967) - Aldrich's rough WWII super-entertainment

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The poster for Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen is an example of a truly exciting, greatly detailed, marvelous ditto

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Lee Marvin (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)) plays the undisciplined major, who gets a tough mission during World War II: Train 12 hardened criminals to storm a Nazi stronghold and kill everyone.

- Quite naturally, it seems to me, this great premise results in a fiercely entertaining piece of war suspense here in Long Islander Robert Aldrich's (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)) The Dirty Dozen. The screenplay, by Nunnally Johnson (The Angel Wore Red (1960)) and Lukas Heller (The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)), is an adaptation of E. M. Nathanson's (Lovers and Schemers (2003)) 1965 novel of the same name.
Dozen is a joy from start to finish for anyone who likes brawling, military-centered action and great actors. - The ensemble cast truly is the core of the film:
Besides Marvin, who is perfect, Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch (1969)) is priceless as the good-hearted general; Oscar-nominated John Cassavetes (Rosemary's Baby (1968)) is good as the rebel in the pack; and Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West/C'era una Volta il West (1968)) nails it as the good soldier. - Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch) is a find as the intractable colonel. The only one I feel a little bad for is the great Jim Brown (Mars Attacks! (1996)), who, as the only black among the dozen, as the cliché seems to stipulate, of course dies... Brown was actually made to choose between his formidable football career and acting around the time of Dozen; at 29, already NFL's all-time greatest rusher at the time, he chose acting.
John Wayne (True Grit (1969)) and Jack Palance (The Silver Chalice (1954)) were approached to star in Dozen but ultimately declined due the fact that their characters were prone to adultery and racism, respectively.
Of the actors portraying the dozen, several were real WWII veterans, including Marvin, who fought with the US Marines in the Pacific.
In the world of today, Dirty Dozen serves as the acknowledged basis of David Ayer's coming superhero mega-movie Suicide Squad (2016), - make of that what you will ...

Lee Marvin leads the 12 untraditional warriors in Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen

Watch the exciting trailer for the film here

Cost: 5.4 mil. $
Box office: 45.3 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Though many critics at the time took aim at Dozen's morally dubious heroes and its violence, the film was also Oscar-nominated 4 times: Aside from Cassavetes as Best Supporting Actor, it was nominated for Editing, Sound and Sound Effects, for which it won its only statuette. The film was a huge commercial success, making 24.2 mil. $ in the US alone, (53 % of the total gross); and also a big hit in European countries like France (4.6 mil. admissions) and Sweden (0.8 mil. admissions). It was the 5th highest-grossing film of '67 and MGM's biggest hit that year.]

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The Boys From Brazil (1978) or, The Last Nazi Command

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A mysterious graphic with an ominous mass of closeups of the same boy makes up this dark poster for Franklin J. Schaffner's The Boys From Brazil

In the late 1960s, Ezra Lieberman hunts slippery Nazi war criminals. In Paraguay, Dr. Mengele, one of the worst Nazi mass-murderers of WWII, lives in relative hiding. But when a young Jew records his ambitious and mad plan to kill 94 men the world over, a puzzling challenge and a deadly game starts for the aging, but resolute Lieberman.

 
The Boys From Brazil is written by Heywood Gould (Rolling Thunder (1977)), adapting the same-titled 1976 novel by Ira Levin's (Rosemary's Baby (1968)), and directed by Japanese-born American master filmmaker Franklin J. Schaffner (The Stripper (1963)), whose 10th feature it was. Levin's fantastical premise is basically the cloning of 94 baby Hitlers. The idea is played dead-serious in the film, and in that way it succeeds in being incredibly frightening.
Staging such a grand, international thriller/murder plot as the one we get here (even with a science fiction element) must be a dream job for most any director, and Schaffner seems to have enjoyed the job and challenge of the endeavor. It certainly is an enjoyable and very entertaining film to watch. It is somewhat reminiscent of Marathon Man (1976), also with Laurence Olivier (The Betsy (1978)), who plays Lieberman here, but in a diametrically opposite kind of part.
Brazil does have a few problems: Some of the European accents of its Hollywood stars grind some in the ears at times, and Gregory Peck (The Omen (1976)) is almost too nice play the infamous monster Dr. Josef Mengele, but nevertheless is still is enjoyable for a fan of him as I.
Olivier, on the other hand, is majestic as the Nazi hunter based on the real McCoy, Simon Wiesenthal, whom Olivier met with and talked to about the part and Wiesenthal's life.
For the film, Jerry Goldsmith (Total Recall (1990)) created an amazing score.

SPOILER The ending in which vicious German shepherds attack two of cinema history's biggest actors is phenomenal, and the film has lots of good supporting roles as well.
The Boys of Brazil stands like a marble pillar in the annals of international thrillers. A solid, great film.

 

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Franklin J. Schaffner: Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Papillon (1973) or, Devil's Island Indeed

Watch a short TV trailer for the film here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: Reportedly 19 mil. $ (North America alone)
= Uncertain but likely a box office success (projected return of 3.33 times its cost)

[The Boys From Brazil premiered 19 August (Honolulu, Hawaii) and runs 125 minutes. Olivier was paid 725k $ for his performance, which was reportedly his motivation for taking the role, as he was returning from serious illness, adamant that he would provide for his wife and children, should he pass away. Shooting took place from October 1977 - March 1978 in Portugal, including Lisbon, England, including London, Austria, including Vienna, and in Pennsylvania. The film reportedly grossed 19 mil. $ in North America. Details of its international numbers are regrettably not available; only it did sell 91k tickets in Denmark, a tidy number that indicates that it was likely popular abroad as well. A 40 mil. $ world gross is projected, which would rank the film a box office success. It was nominated for Best Actor (Olivier), lost to Jon Voight for Coming Home; Editing, lost to The Deer Hunter, and Score, lost to Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Express. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Schaffner returned with Sphinx (1981). Olivier returned in A Little Romance (1979); Peck in The Sea Wolves (1980); and James Mason (The Sea Gull (1968)) in Murder by Decree (1979). The Boys From Brazil  is fresh at 70 % with a 6.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

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