Kelvin Richard
The movie is supposed to be on the death camp doctor Joseph Mengele and the Mossad attempt to capture him, the sterling performances by Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain do not make up for glaring omissions in the plot.
No scenes were depicted of what Vogel (Mengele) got upto in the concentration camps, in fact no scenes depicted in camps at all, so no context or background is indicated.
The movie builds up to quite a crescendo in the end, then falls dead flat without any conclusion at all at the end, which is a complete anticlimax.
Jackson Booth-Millard
I mainly knew about this film because of the leading actress, having seen the DVD cover many times, apart from that I didn't have a clue what the plot or story involved, I hope it may be something worth passing the time with, directed by John Madden (Mrs Brown, Shakespeare in Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). Basically in 1965, Mossad agents Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) are in East Berlin, they are assigned to kidnap Nazi Dieter Vogel (Quantum of Solace's Jesper Christensen), aka The Surgeon of Birkenau, a war criminal who carried out medical experiments on Jews during World War II. During the process, Stephan tells Rachel that David lost his entire family in The Holocaust, this drives his dedication to their mission, but also makes his hesitant to become emotionally involved with her, both Stephan and David are attracted to Rachel, she is attracted to David, but sleeps with Stephan. The group are successful in the abduction, with Rachel injecting the doctor with sedative during an examination, but fail to bring him to the west side, so they are forced to hold him in an apartment building, taking turns to monitor and feed him. But one night, following a severe beating from David, Vogel manages to cut through his bonds and escapes, but the trio of young agents lie to their government, telling them that Rachel killed the doctor while he was running away. More than thirty years later, in 1997, the three agents are honoured as heroes, Rachel's daughter Sarah Gold (Romi Aboulafia) is releasing a book about the mission of her mother and the two other agents. The three former agents, Rachel Singer (Dame Helen Mirren) who still bares the scar across her face, Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) who is now a paralytic in a wheelchair, and David Peretz (Ciarán Hinds) who is missing, they are now all retired. Rachel still feels uncomfortable about the lie they have been living with, out of the blue David appears in Tel Aviv and commits suicide, Stephan investigates his death. Soon enough it is discovered that Dieter Vogel is alive in a hospital in Kiev, Ukraine, and will be interviewed by a journalist, it is discovered the man is an impostor, but Rachel is shocked to see the real Vogel. Rachel is determined to travel to Kiev and conclude what should have been done all those years ago, in a confrontation Vogel stabs Rachel twice with a pair of scissors, but she kills Vogel with a poisonous syringe in the back, as she limps away, a note she wrote for journalists telling the truth about their mission is discovered, to be relayed to the world. Mirren with her short time on screen is fine, and Chastain then a rising star proves herself, there are some gripping enough action style sequences, fights and a botched mission, the switching backwards and forwards in time a little distracting, and the choice of actors playing the younger and older characters is questionable, when they don't look much like each other, is is mostly slow, but a relatively interesting spy drama thriller. Okay!
Fahim Akhter
A spy film without American spies involved is always a good start.The story revolves around three Mossad agents two men and a woman and the mission they carried out. It's set in two time lines the time of east Germany and present day where the daughter of the woman has written a book about the spy life of her mother and the mission that made them infamous.I'd recommend this if you enjoyed Munich and tinker tailor soldier and spy. While the two mentioned films focus on more spy double crosses and mysteries. This is more of a drama revolving around the event and the layers of lies it involved. The acting by the two set of actors (different actors on the two different time lines) is brilliant and you feel touched. It is possible to feel or at least understand the circumstances, the risk and above the uncertainty involved undertaking these missions.The drama does not only show spies as spies but people, something the American's (Show) has able to achieve. It does get slow in parts and predictable in others. If you are looking to see a great spy film, I'd say go for Munich or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy but if you're looking for a drama where the cast of characters happen to be spies this is a good watch.
