A Nazi-hunting thriller deepens into a meditation on conscience in The Debt. We watch the same characters over two time periods. In 1997, Mossad agent Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) is being honored for her heroism 30 years prior for killing Vogel (Jesper Christensen), the notorious surgeon of Birkenau. But did she? Stephan (Tom Wilkinson), Rachel's ex-husband and partner in the mission, informs her that David (Ciarán Hinds), the third member of the team, has just killed himself. And so director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) flashes back to the past to show us what really transpired when young Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) captured Vogel in East Berlin. These scenes exude shivering suspense as well as sexual tension. Chastain (a nifty match-up with Mirren) is a live wire, and her scenes with Csokas and Worthington have a spark the later scenes lack. No matter. The Debt holds you in its grip.

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“IRM”

Fashioned to mimic the sound of a magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, "IRM" (the French designation for the brain scan) grew out of Gainsbourg’s love of the sound of the clickety-clack of medical machinery. The IRM album project also marked the fulfillment of two goals for the singer: to document a traumatic experience, and to record an album with Beck. Though her co-creator and producer didn’t necessarily know the details of her water-skiing accident and resulting cerebral hemorrhage (which lead to the IRM of the song's title), he somehow knew how to handle the material. "Beck had a way of guessing what I was thinking and feeling without me telling him," said Gainsbourg. "We never discussed these things explicitly."