THE DEBT Review
by Matt Goldberg Posted: August 31st, 2011 at 7:00 am

This has been Jessica Chastain’s year as far as ubiquity goes. She’s co-starred in The Tree of Life, The Help, Take Shelter, and she’s still got Texas Killing Fields and Coriolanus on the way. However, of the films I’ve seen her in so far, she’s never been front and center. She was overshadowed by Brad Pitt in Tree of Life, everything was overshadowed by Michael Shannon in Take Shelter, and she did a fine job in The Help hinting that she was the real deal. But her latest film, The Debt, gives her the lead and she’s never able to hold the screen with any intensity or subtlety. She’s once again overshadowed by her fellow actors and this time around she must struggle with a movie that tries to be an intense spy-thriller and ignores its strengths as a claustrophobic pressure-cooker and thoughtful moral drama.