Starring Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, and Sam Worthington. In English, German, and Ukrainian with English subtitles. Rated 14A.

The troubles of the world don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to the romantic and ethical concerns of three little people in The Debt. Perhaps in the Israeli film on which this is based, more perspective is maintained, but director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), with a script credited to five people, reduces international intrigue to pulpy love.

Of course, he has assembled a fine team to help. Brit Sam Worthington and Kiwi Marton Csokas are Mossad agents who squabble over commando babe Rachel (Jessica Chastain) when tasked to capture a Nazi war criminal (Denmark’s Jesper Christensen) in 1965 Germany. In the late 1990s, the same ménage à trois—now played by Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, and Helen Mirren—is still fretting over what went down back then. In fact, they might get sucked into doing one last job!

The subject, it seems, had moved on from conducting hideous medical experiments to running an ob-gyn clinic in East Berlin. So maybe putting Rachel in the stirrups makes sense. But, jeez, three visits? Dustin Hoffman only sat in Laurence Olivier’s dentist chair once. When the Nazi-napping goes wrong, our heroes are forced to sit on Dr. Fun themselves, leading to many weak Silence of the Lambs scenes, and then to a climax juiced by sound editing suitable for trench warfare. The noise is needed, along with a last-minute shift to Ukraine, since neither the romantic entanglement nor the villain are terribly interesting.

The moral fallout of the mission does raise some good questions, but in the end, that’s just so much window dressing. Chastain’s the real deal, though; after going ethereal in The Tree of Life and comic in The Help, she makes a tough mark here.

Watch the trailer for The Debt.