The great Helen Mirren plays an Israeli secret service agent haunted by the long-ago kidnapping of a Nazi war criminal in “The Debt,” directed by John Madden, who once upon a time helmed “Shakespeare in Love” but whose last film, “Killshot” with Mickey Rourke, went straight to DVD in the states.

Mirren and former husband and Mossad bigshot Tom Wilkinson are shaken by the suicide of Ciaran Hinds, who plays a third member of a squad that was sent into East Germany to abduct a German doctor who conducted horrible experiments at the Birkenau death camps. Though things didn’t go according to plan, they were honored for their role in the mission, which Mirren has never spoken about publicly.

Sam Worthington, Martin Csokas and Jessica Chastain play Hinds, Wilkinson and Mirren as young Mossad agents in some taut sequences set in the ’60s. But “The Debt” courts ridicule when Mirren is dispatched for a “Boys From Brazil” style battle with a dying Nazi who has to be pushing 90 in a climax set in the present day.