Bad Debt

Saturday matinee double-header time! Today’s bill: first “Contagion” followed by a $5 hot dog and “The Debt.” Let’s take the first part last.

My title refers to a Marshall Chapman song about a deadbeat boyfriend who drinks all the singer’s beer and hangs around like, well, a bad debt. I want to point that out because I’m not calling “The Debt” bad at all… it was quite good, even though it drops off at the end.

Basically, three Mossad agents went after a Josef Mengele-type Nazi fugitive in 1966, and have been revered as national heroes ever since for killing him as he tried to escape. Now, 30 years later, the daughter of two of those agents has written a book about the experience. The problem is that events didn’t play out precisely as reported. And now the guilt over a secret that’s been hanging over our trio like a bad debt is in danger of going public.

It’s a good movie. It’s not a well-paced movie, though. A lot of the reviews I’ve read refer to the plot jumping back and forth in time, but it doesn’t. For the first 15 or 20 minutes, sure, but once the plot travels back to 1966 it stays there until that part of the story’s finished. And only after that do we get the resolution involving retired agents trying to fix things. I spent the whole drive home trying to figure out how the story could’ve been told differently, and I don’t know. The 1966 plot is so gripping that I would’ve been pissed had it been interrupted. The 1997 plot depends so completely on knowing how the 1996 plot ended that any flash-forwards to modern times would’ve pretty much been Helen Mirren scowling at Tom Wilkinson while they argue about what to do, when I’d rather watch Jessica Chastain beat up a Nazi.

*HERE BE SPOILERS*

For instance, if you cut from three young people in a Berlin apartment with a Nazi chained to the radiator to the late 90s when Helen’s tracking down a octogenarian claiming to be the evil doctor, it’s pretty obvious that the guy got out of that apartment. Ah, but how did he get out? Maybe the Plot Gods could’ve fixed this after all…

Okay, I’m about to do something I try never to do, because I think it’s douchey: Here’s where I honestly thought this movie was going, and now I think my version might’ve been better, meaning easier to write around. Dr. Evil is an OB-GYN, and Young Helen/Jessica is newly pregnant. What if, after he frees himself and beats the hell out of her, the menfolk come back (from WHERE THE HELL DID THEY GO ANYWAY???) and keep Dr. Evil from escaping. But maybe Dr. Evil has YH/J hostage, or she’s hemorrhaging, and now we have this situation: Dr. Evil can save her baby, maybe even her life, but only if they let him go. Decisions, decisions. She doesn’t really love the baby’s father. How does each of the men feel about her? Willing to let her die, or no?

And then there’s this… the whole reason that this movie even includes the 30-years-after plot is because “The Debt” is about the things that hang over us and how we cope with them. Guilt over losing a war criminal because he got the drop on you and you lied about it is heavy. But the guilt of knowing that he’s still out there because you willingly let him go? Unbearable. And, I think, a lot more interesting.

*END SPOILERS*

What you end up with instead is a very well-acted film that, in pieces, is well-made. I could always tell what was going on during the action scenes, which is more than I can say for most current films. In a nutshell, “The Debt” is an intriguing film whose story structure doesn’t optimally serve some wonderful actors and a rich premise.

I don’t have much to say about “Contagion.” It was good, worth my seven bucks, and you should see it. I think I need to think about it more… Because all I’m thinking about now are the things that didn’t work for me. I liked that director Steven Soderbergh took a more clinical, detached approach to the type of disaster story that too often comes down to an average guy trying to save his kid. (Though that guy is indeed here. Hi, Matt Damon!)

At least this time we get to see the rest of the world react. The detachment is good, for me, because it made genuinely affecting moments feel earned, rather than just melodramatic. I teared up more than once at scenes that just hit my humanity – a near-death patient trying to give her blanket to another virus victim with serious chills, or a doctor visiting her sick father. That kind of thing is so much more emotionally devastating for me than seeing yet another Joe Sixpack huddled with his golden retriever facing the end of the world, so I’m really glad Soderbergh didn’t take the typical disaster movie route.

Flaws? One – pick a category of disaster. You do not get to witness riots at the grocery store, your next-door neighbors being shot for their non-perishable food items and total quarantine of your town, and then come home to find your electricity working (unless you have a generator). For some reason this really bugged me. Also, I thought Jude Law’s blogger character is realistic – and what a sad commentary that is – but he would’ve been more interesting to me had he been toned down slightly. As it is, there’s not any doubt – at least there wasn’t for me – that he’s only concerned for himself.

*HERE BE SPOILERS*

At one point, blogger guy is pushing a homeopathic “cure” and urging his readers not to take the rapidly-approved vaccine, and he’s accused of profiting. Is he right that the government is manipulating tests to show that the homeopathic cure is BS? Is the CDC really in bed with the pharmaceutical industry? Are the authorities really keeping a cure to themselves? See, these would be interesting questions to ponder. But because Law’s character is so one-dimensional, we never really have to ask them. And that’s sad, because Law is a good enough actor to pull off the earnest activist who’s in over his head, and that would’ve been SO much more interesting to watch than the narcissist who’s so obviously been corrupted by his millions of page clicks.

*END SPOILERS*

Two good movies. Two stories that might’ve been better told. And that’s the real bad debt that hangs over you: seeing a movie that, given the skill of the people involved, you know for a fact could’ve been better than it was.