The Debt (2010)

“Maybe it's not always a blessing to survive.”

            Movies claiming to be suspenseful rely too much on quick editing, blowing things up, and messy dialogue. This makes me question if anyone in Hollywood today has ever seen a Hitchcock movie or a Film Noir? In Hitchcock movies and Film Noirs the suspense came from the lack of dialogue, the acting by the actors or actresses and what they were able to convey without much dialogue and their body language, and the direction. There are probably quite a few films that have been made within the past five years that come to those Hitchcock and Film Noir style but most likely have not come as close as The Debt. Every line, every movement and facial expression from the actors, and every movement from the camera is filled with suspense.

            Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren), her husband Stephan, and another man named David Peretz are venerated heroes in their home country of Israel. All three are former Mossad secret agents who, in 1965, captured and killed a man known as The Surgeon of Birkenau. Rachel’s daughter has just written a book about their story as agents and their assignment. The daughter is beyond proud of her mother who was the one who reportedly killed the Dieter Vogel, The Surgeon of Birkenau, after he had tried to escape. Rachel had struggled with Vogel before he got away. He slashed her face with a knife leaving what would be a permanent scar. The two fought but he overpowered her. Rachel was able to get up and go to a window where she aimed at a running Vogel and shot him dead.

            Stephan with his bodyguards and minders go to pick up David to bring him to a party for the book. David is clearly agitated from the moment he opens the door. All the way to the car he is anxious. When he sees Stephan in the backseat of the car David jumps in front of a truck killing himself. The reason for David’s suicide becomes clear when Stephan gives Rachel an assignment. Word has gotten out that there is a man in a Ukrainian hospital claiming to be The Surgeon of Birkenau and a reporter wants to write his story. David, Stephan, and Rachel’s reputations as heroes will crumble if the truth of their failure and their lie is ever revealed.

            In 1965 Rachel (Jessica Chastain in the younger role) was twenty-five years old. She is highly trained in marksmanship and krav maga.  For her mission she has been sent with David Peretz (Sam Worthington in the younger role) and Stephan Gold to East Berlin to capture Dieter Vogel and bring him back to Israel to stand trial for his war crimes. Dieter is a doctor with his own practice. Rachel and David pretend to be a couple who are having trouble conceiving a child. This will allow Rachel to keep returning to Vogel before she is to drug him to take him away. The rest of the plan involves putting Vogel on a train that will smuggle him out of the country. The plan unfortunately does not go smoothly. Rachel was unable to give Vogel the full dose and at the train station Vogel wakes up in the back of a truck and honks the horn bringing attention to all of them.

            David, Stephan, and Rachel manage to get away with Vogel but they are all now holed up in their apartment with the killer. Vogel is a smart man he talks to them and plays on their insecurities that he has witnessed. He looks for little cues in their body language when he says something to them that strikes a nerve. Eventually he gets the three agents to argue about certain things pitting them against each other.

            One night Rachel is left alone with Vogel. He somehow manages to get out of his restraints and goes after her. From behind, he slices her face. The two fight but in the situation Vogel is able to overpower Rachel. He eventually gets away and is never seen or heard from again. When all is said and done Stephan proposes that they do not reveal the truth hat Vogel escaped because it would damage their reputation and their careers. Rachel does not like the idea but she goes along with it. David, from that day forward, struggles with the lie.

            Thirty years later, when David returned to Israel after having been away for so many years, he wants to tell the truth. Rachel will not hear of it because of her daughter’s book. When she looks back on that conversation with him and their lie she now knows why David killed himself.

            Rachel goes to the Ukrainian hospital. When she gets to the room to the man who is supposedly Vogel, she sees it is not Vogel just some old man telling stories. Before she leaves the room she writes a note for the reporter explain her story and the truth and for him to publish it. As she is leaving the hospital she sees a man notice her and then run up the stairs. She follows the man and sees it is the real Vogel. He confesses he should never have told the old man anything. The two have one last fight. Vogel stabs Rachel twice knocking her to the floor. She manages to stab Vogel in the back with a syringe which kills him as he walks down the hallway. The last scene is Rachel walking away bleeding.

            The cast was fantastic. Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain are incredible actresses. They are able to take the material they are given and just make their characters so much more. You can see every ounce of guilt and pain and torment on their faces. No matter what Mirren or Chastain are in their acting is just so top notch I am in constant awe of them whenever I watch their movies. Sam Worthington was the same way you can see all his guilt and pain and torment on his face. Vogel was meant to be an evil, creepy, manipulative character and the actor played that to perfection. Every actor in this movie was perfection in their roles.

            John Madden’s direction was great. His direction captured the characters emotions, movements, and even thoughts brilliantly. Madden, to me, really did not use quick shots or edits to capture the suspense of certain situations in the movie but he did not linger on any of them too long. Madden’s direction along with the acting really kept my attention and focus.

            The Debt is a great movie. There are some moments that are a bit slower than others but for the most part the movie keeps a good pace. The story was a great mix of suspense, thriller, and drama much like Hitchcock and Noir movies are. The Debt is an excellent movie that I highly suggest watching. 

The Woman in Gold (2014)

“We should be reunited with what is rightfully ours.”

            Do you have an object such as a photograph or piece of jewelry or piece of furniture or a piece of clothing or china set, etc. that has holds special memories and meaning to you and your family? Is it an object that when you or a family member look at a flood of memories from a specific moment in time rushes to your mind?

            There is a saying “the most important things in life aren’t things.” This saying to me is like “money can’t buy happiness.” Of course money can buy you happiness it can make you comfortable. And there are without a doubt physical things in your life that are important to you and your family. Things hold memories of good and bad times, of people that are no longer in your life, or a moment or even a person you want to cherish forever.

            During World War II Hitler and the Nazis took things away from the Jews. They looted religious artifacts, jewelry, clothes, china, and most especially art. What they looted was not just solely inanimate objects they stole memories and culture and hard work. The Nazis went into peoples’ homes and told them they had no right to what they had because they were Jewish and inferior and inferior people should not have the privilege of owning anything valuable. Pride was also another thing that was also stolen.

            One of the most famous pieces of art that was stolen during World War II was Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by the Austrian Secessionist artist Gustav Klimt. The Block-Bauer family had been a patron to Klimt. They commissioned him to make several works of art for them but their pride was in his portrait of Adele. Adele was beautiful and intelligent. She had a great magnetism that pulled people into her orbit. She loved her country, her heritage, and her people. Adele unfortunately died tragically young at age forty-three of meningitis. Her husband Ferdinand never fully recovered from her loss. For decades after the War Maria Altmann, Adele’s niece, never forgot her aunt and her beautiful portrait, or how the Nazis forced her and her husband to leave their beloved Vienna and family behind forever. The movie The Woman in Gold, based on the book The Lady in Gold by Anne- Marie O’Connor, tells the story of how Maria Altmann, with the help of a lawyer who was also a family friend, took on the Austrian government to have her aunt’s portrait and all of her memories of a good life she had to leave behind returned to her.

            Maria’s (Helen Merrin) sister Luise has just passed away. At the funeral is a family friend whose son is a lawyer. She asks her friend to have her son Randy (Ryan Reynolds) contact her. Randy is a young man in 1998. He just accepted a job at a big law firm and he has a young wife and baby daughter. Maria wants Randy to help her try to get back her Aunt Adele’s portrait from the Austrians. Randy is given time by his law firm to explore the matter but only for one week.

            The Austrian government has an art restitution committee. They hold a meeting in which Maria and several others speak about what happened to their families and what was taken from them and never returned. The committee absolutely refuses to return The Woman in Gold it is considered the epitome of Austrian art and culture and their version of The Mona Lisa. They also state that it was in Adele’s will that all her art work by Klimt be given to the Belvedere Museum, where it had been since World War II, upon the death of her husband. There are several issues with Adele’s will: one, it was on a piece of paper and not official, and two, the most important was that she was not the rightful owner her husband was and therefore had no right to leave them to the museum. Of course the museum blew that off and so did the committee.

            Years and years pass as Randy and Maria try everything in their power to have The Woman in Gold returned.  Finally Randy decides that he is going to sue Austria. His plan works. The case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court and comes to a close in the courts of Austria which grants Maria with ownership of the portrait.

            To know much more than what I was able to articulately write and explain, I highly encourage you to research the painting, the legal battle, and to read O’Connor’s book (the book is poorly written in my opinion but the information in it outweighs the bad writing and editing).

            Based off the small summary I gave of the movie if you are wondering how can a work of art by a painter who lived over a hundred years ago be worth so much for an old woman fight for? It is mostly the idea of attached memories. The last scene of the movie is Maria Altmann walking into the apartment on Ringstrasse in Vienna and a flood of memories return to her. She sees her Aunt Adele following her and her sister around the house playing with them, her Uncle Ferdinand shows her a passage in a book he is reading, she sees her father happily playing his cello, in another room memories of her wedding come back to her, and in the last room she sees the portrait of her aunt hung prominently over the fireplace and the real Adele standing underneath it. That is what the portrait meant to Maria Altmann. It meant memories of her happy family and her loving aunt and the save comfortable home of her childhood. It represented not only happiness but also of all the people and things she had to leave behind in order to flee safely to America away from the Nazis. (That was my favorite part of the entire movie it was beautiful. I genuinely teared up a little bit).

            Another very important reason Maria wanted the portrait back and out of Vienna is because of the country’s role in World War II. The Austrians allowed Hitler and the Nazis to basically walk right in and take over. Austria has memory loss when it comes to WWII. Or better yet they chose to have that memory loss. Many of the people claim that their country was the victim that they were a conquered people when they were in reality not. One of the greatest atrocities the museum and the Nazis did to the portrait was to change the portrait’s title. They changed the title from Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer to simply The Woman in Gold. By changing the name to something simple and understated they stripped Adele of her Jewish identity and heritage.

            The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was sold to Ronald Lauder’s (Estee Lauder’s son) NeueGalerie in New York City for $135 million dollars. I remember reading about this before I knew the whole story of the painting and being quite upset because the woman fought for it, took it out of Vienna, and then sold it. But now after reading the book and knowing more about its history and of Austria’s attitude it makes perfect sense for Maria to have done what she did with the portrait. Ronald Lauder was once an ambassador to Austria and was a collector of late 19^th century/early 20^th century German and Austrian art. Maria Altmann stipulated that the portrait of her aunt should always be on display for people to see.

            I want to point out that the art we see in museums was never meant to be seen in museums. Portraits, like Adele’s were meant to be hung in homes and to be seen by family and guests. Ancient religious relics were meant to be used in ceremonies to worship gods and goddess. Rooms were meant to be in the homes or buildings for which were originally part of. They had an identity within their context. Every single piece of art be it a painting, a room, a sculpture, suits of armor, etc. has lost their context. Museums can, try as they might to, supply as much information on a piece as they can but its truest meaning has been lost in transference from place to place. They have been stripped of their original intent and identity much like Adele Bloch-Bauer’s portrait was just not to the extreme extent hers was.

            Now that I have gone over some of the true story let’s get back to a movie review.

            Despite the story being incredibly fascinating I feel it would not have work as well had Helen Mirren and Tatiana Maslany not been cast in the role of Maria Altmann. Obviously, Mirren played the older Maria and Maslany played the younger. The two women have an incredible ability to adapt to whatever role they are given. Mirren and Maslany are forces of immense talent. Maria Altmann would have been a very good character as the older version but the younger version would not have worked as well had there been an actress in the role other than Maslany. This may seem like I am being biased but I am a huge fan of Maslany’s from her show Orphan Black where she plays nine (yes, I said nine) different clone characters to such insane perfection that you have a favorite clone. I have seen all twenty episodes of Orphan Black countless times and I still have to remind myself that the same girl is playing all these different women with all this baggage and back story. Maslany is just amazing. You can see how hard she works and how deep she cares for her characters because she makes playing them all look effortless. In The Woman in Gold, she makes the emotional heaviness of playing Maria Altmann when she had to leave her family look effortless and completely heartbreaking.  When actors and actresses are great in whatever roles they are given you can see their dedication come through. With Mirren and Maslany you can see their dedication and that is why the character of Maria Altmann, both young and older, was fantastic.

            (I do not know if any of what I just wrote makes any sense. It is hard to articulate my view of these two women because I adore them both actresses they are just so immensely talented)

            Ryan Reynolds did a good job playing Randy. Randy was not an extraordinary character he was an ordinary character with not such an extraordinary history like Maria. I will say that Reynolds did a great job portraying Randy’s kindness, perseverance, and determination. Daniel Bruhl is one of the top billed actors above the title but he is barely in it and he does not leave a mark whatsoever on the story or movie. Katie Holmes played Randy’s wife. She is just a waste of film.

            The Woman in Gold as a movie was more than I could have hoped for. I had been so exited ever since hearing the story was being made into a movie but I did not want to get my hopes up because of the Monuments Men movie which I thought was terrible. Fortunately The Woman in Gold exceeded my expectations. I have a BA in Art History and MA in Museum Registration. I understand art and I understand art/museum laws/ethics. Art law and museum ethics are what make this story so fascinating. Plus the idea of who owns art is also fascinating. Restitution from World War II is still happening to this day. Over 100,000 pieces of art are still missing. For my one museum class I had to read an article about looted art. The author wrote that Nazi looted art is one of the greatest unresolved issues of World War II. Over eighty years later Hitler is still creating problems. Maria Altmann’s case is one such case that has brought art restitution to the attention of the public.

            The Woman in Gold on the surface is about Nazi looted art. But when you look deep enough it is a story of stolen memories, pride, love, and families. It is about the power of art and how much a work of art could mean to people. To me art is a thing on which to place your emotions and create memories around even if they are hanging in a museum and you do not physically own them. I understand all the different ways that art moves people and how powerful that bond with a work of art can be (I go crazy for John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. To me there is no greater feeling in the world than when I stand in front of that sassy woman). In America we are not fortunate enough to know what it is like to truly care for a masterpiece of our country’s art. We do not have that one defining piece of American art that we would do battle for if it ever came to a point where it might leave the country. You do not need to know what doing battle for a piece of art would feel like or even know what it feels like to be emotionally attracted to be work of art to be enraptured, enthralled, and entertained by The Woman in Gold. 

Red 2 (2013)

 “What happens in the Kremlin stays in the Kremlin!”

            Not very often do movie sequels work out. It is very rare that they are good let alone better than the first one. Red 2 is one of those rare movies that is even better than the first. It takes all the fun exciting elements of the first Red and turns them up ten notches.

            Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is enjoying his nice quiet retired life with his girlfriend Sarah (Mary- Louise Parker) strolling through Costco when his old friend Marvin (John Malkovich) finds him. Marvin brings up the fact that Frank has not killed anyone in months. Frank likes that fact though, he is not looking for a fight or to kill anyone. Meanwhile, Sarah seems to be the one who wants all the excitement back in her life she seems to be bored in the quiet life. Marvin tells Frank that information leaked about an old Cold War weapon called Nightshade and their names are mentioned in the information.

            Their lives soon get turned upside down when Marvin “dies”. As Frank and Sarah leave the church Frank is taken in by federal agents. He is taken to a facility where he is being interrogated. While Frank is being interrogated a man named Jack Horton (Neal McDonough) comes storming through the building with a group of operatives who are looking to take Frank out. Of course Frank manages to escape and gets to Marvin (who is not dead he just faked his own death) and Sarah.

            As this is happening a hit is put on Frank’s life and the person sent to kill him is a Korean assassin named Han Cho Bai who has a big time grudge against Frank.

            In London, people are also after Victoria (Helen Mirren). MI6 rings her and tells her she has been assigned to kill Frank. She in turns rings up Frank and tells him about the hit.

            Frank, Marvin and Sarah travel to Paris to question a weapons dealer nicknamed The Frog. In Paris Frank comes across an old flame named Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Katja is a Russian and she and Frank have a romantic as well as enemy relationship. Sarah is not thrilled when she sees how hypnotized Frank is by Katja and is constantly asking if they can kill Katja.         

            The team eventually finds out that the Nightshade weapon was developed by a man named Dr. Edward Bailey (Anthony Hopkins). He has been in an asylum for thirty-two years by MI6. Frank, Sarah, and Victoria bust him out. Bailey tells them his weapon that had been lost in Russia is hidden beneath the Kremlin. When they get the weapon they find out that Bailey was locked away because he wanted to activate the weapon not, as they had been told, because he was crazy.

            The cast is once again brilliant. And once again Mary-Louise Parker and John Malkovich steal the entire movie. Parker I was dying laughing with, again, because of her facial expressions they were so hilarious. I loved how jealous Sarah was with Katja and Parker just knocked those scenes out. Her funniest scene was at the end… and that is all I will say because it is too funny to give away. Helen Mirren I enjoyed more here than in the first one because she was just completely bad ass. She shot off more guns and killed more people than the first time. One of her first scenes was her cleaning up two dead bodies she had made and then destroying them in her hotel bathroom in the bathtub by dowsing them with chemicals and all without batting an eye. That is an awesome bitch in my eyes. Catherine Zeta- Jones is not in the movie for very long which is a shame because she and Bruce Willis worked very well together in their scenes. I hate seeing Neal McDonough as a bad guy but he was very good. I always enjoy seeing him in things. Anthony Hopkins was alright he did not make too much of an impression on me.

            From beginning to the end of Red 2 I was laughing and immensely entertained. Red 2 had a perfect balance of action, comedy, and drama. It is just all around a very well made movie from the acting, writing, direction, action to just everything. I highly suggest seeing this movie especially if you need to let go and have a good laugh. 

Red (2010)

“This used to be a Gentleman's game.”

            Twelve years ago I caught a marathon of the TV show Alias on ABC Family. My grandparents raved on and on about it and how much I would like seeing this girl kicking everyone’s ass wherever she went. So when I saw there was a marathon on ABC Family I started watching it and from the first episode I saw I was hooked. That night was the premier of Alias’s second season and from then on my life has never been in the same in many ways. Honestly, if I never watched Alias I would not be running this blog today. Anyway, to get to the point, since that time I have love watching movie and books about spies. I think the world of espionage is fascinating both in real life and fantasy. I always say if I was smart enough I would love to work for the FBI or CIA as an undercover agent. For the past three years my grandparents have been telling me I need to see the movie Red because they kick a lot of ass, shoot and kill a lot of people, blow up almost everything and most of all because it is hysterical. I watched Red and it was one of the funniest most enjoyable movies I have seen in a while.

            Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired black-ops agent. He lives in a nice quiet neighborhood all by himself in a nice house. Every month he gets his pension from the government and when he does he likes to call to speak to his case worker Sarah (Mary- Louise Parker). Both of them are bored and lonely in their lives. Sarah dreams of traveling and lives vicariously through her romance novels while Frank wakes up at 6am everyday and works out and also reads the novels Sarah tells him about. At 3am one morning Frank gets up and walks downstairs. There are men in his house in combat gear looking for him. Frank easily takes them out. He takes out bullets in one of the guns he pulled off one of the bodies, puts them on a frying pan, and heats it up. The bullets go off and soon enough a barrage of bullets are unleashed onto his house by a whole fleet of men in combat gear. Frank manages to take them out as well and gets away.

            Sarah had a bad date. She comes home and Frank is standing in her hallway. Sarah screams her head off that Frank is in her apartment. He is there to take her away since people are after him they will be after her to kill her because she has been talking to him. He ties her up and sticks her in the backseat of his car.

            Frank takes Sarah all over the place to find his old black-ops buddies. He finds out they are all targeted because they were involved in a recovery mission down in South America years before and they now need to be eliminated. He rounds up Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), and Victoria (Helen Mirren) who all have their own special talents with weapons and information. They are all being chased down by an ambitious CIA agent named William Cooper (Karl Urban) whose job it is to get rid of people.

            The movie is too hysterical to give away too much detail other than what I have already written.

            The cast was perfect. They all interacted wonderfully. I was dying seeing Helen Mirren holding these huge guns and being a bad ass. To me Mary-Louise Parker and John Malkovich stole the entire movie they were the funniest to me. It looked like they all had a great time making this movie together. I like that whoever made this movie  did not just throw all these great actors in it for the sake of having names (well maybe they did) and only having them in the movie for like two seconds. Each actor had a wonderful amount of screen time and they were all perfect.

            Red is immensely enjoyable. I was cracking up with almost every scene because the characters were funny the dialogue was very sharp and witty. There are some scenes that you think “oh shit how are they gonna get out of this” and then boom they are out or something totally unexpected happens. Red is one of those action movies that just has everything that makes it great and enjoyable. Highly suggest seeing Red especially if you are like me and love watching spy movies.