The Debt (the 114 minutes that they stole from me)

The Debt
2011
Directed by John Madden
Full production details on imdb

minigraph:

Thoroughly mediocre against raised expectations. Fun if you're easily gripped and can tolerate silly accents.

The characters are Israeli, it's set in Israel, they read Hebrew and there are Magen Davids everywhere. So why, oh why, do we need to have every character adopting a dubious and unique accent? It's clear what language they are 'speaking,' there is no purpose to this. The only logical argument I can see is that in a mixed nationality cast it is not clear which accent should be used for consistency, so why not settle for the accent of the language we are meant to imagine they are speaking. I'll tell you why not - because none of them can do it well enough and it just draws attention to the pretence, makes it forced and hammy. Better to have them all speak Hebrew in line with the German and Ukrainian segments. Or perhaps they thought we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

So, The Debt and I didn't exactly get off to a great start.