In 1965, three Mossad Agents cross into East Berlin to apprehend a notorious Nazi war criminal. Thirty years later, the secrets the Agents share come back to haunt them.
The espionage thriller begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel Singer (Dame Helen Mirren) and Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague David Peretz (Ciarán Hinds). All three have been venerated for decades by their country because of the mission that they undertook back in 1965, when the trio (Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington) tracked down Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) in East Berlin. At great risk, and at considerable personal cost, the team's mission was accomplished--or was it? The suspense builds in and across two different time periods, with startling action and surprising revelations.—Focus Features
In 1965, Mossad Agents Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain), Stephan Gold (Marton Csokas), and David Peretz (Sam Worthington) are assigned to kidnap Nazi Dieter Vogel, a.k.a. The Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), in East Berlin. They succeed in the abduction, but fail in bringing him to the west side. They stay with him in an apartment building; he escapes, but the trio of young Agents lies to their government and tells them that Rachel killed Vogel while he was running away. They have been honored in their country by their action for more than 30 years. In 1997, Rachel's daughter Sarah Gold (Romi Amboulafia) releases a book in Tel Aviv about the mission of her mother and the two other agents. Rachel Singer (Dame Helen Mirren), Sarah's father Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson), who is paralytic in a wheelchair, and David Peretz (Ciarán Hinds), who is missing, are retired and Rachel is uncomfortable with the lie with which they have been living. Out of the blue, David appears in Tel Aviv and commits suicide. Stephan investigates and finds that Dieter Vogel is apparently alive in a hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, and will be interviewed by a journalist. Now Rachel must travel to Kyiv to conclude what they should have done 30 years ago.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The year is 1997 and Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) is honored by her daughter Sarah (Romi Aboulafia) during a release party in Tel Aviv for Sarah's book based on the account Rachel, Stefan and David gave of the events in 1965. Concurrently, David (Ciarán Hinds) is escorted from his apartment by an Israeli government agent for a debriefing. David recognizes Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) waiting in another vehicle and unable to face their lie, he commits suicide by stepping in front of an oncoming truck.
The film then flashbacks, and it is 1965. A young Mossad agent Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain) on her first field assignment arrives in East Berlin to meet with more experienced agents David Peretz (Sam Worthington) and Stefan Gold (Marton Csokas). Their mission is to capture Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen)-infamously known as "The Surgeon of Birkenau" for his medical experiments on Jews during World War II-and bring him to Israel to face justice. Rachel and David present themselves as an ethnic German married couple from Argentina and Rachel plants herself as a patient at Vogel's obstetrics and gynecology clinic.
Stefan reveals to Rachel that David lost his entire family in The Holocaust which apparently drives his dedication to their mission but also makes him hesitant to become emotionally involved with her. Both Stefan and David are instantly attracted to Rachel. Rachel is attracted to David yet sleeps with Stefan shortly after David reluctantly refuses her advances. Rachel, as a part of her cover, receives fertility treatments at the clinic where Vogel is a doctor, and her tryst results in Rachel becoming pregnant.
At her final doctor appointment, Rachel injects Vogel with a sedative during an examination and induces the nurse (Vogel's wife) to believe that he has suffered a heart attack. Stefan and David arrive dressed as paramedics and make off with the unconscious Vogel in a faux ambulance, barely ahead of the real ambulance team. Under cover of night, the trio attempt their ex-filtration at Wollankstrasse Station (during construction of the Berlin wall, few stations on the West Berlin Metro got left on the East Berlin side and the team arranges for one train to stop at the station unscheduled, to allow them a chance to escape.
But the station is heavily guarded by the Eart German Army), on a railway line along the sector boundary between East and West Berlin, and next to a mail depot. As they prepare to load Vogel onto the stopped train he suddenly awakens and sounds the horn of the stolen mail van where he is being held, alerting East German guards to their presence. In the ensuing shootout, David sacrifices his chance to escape in order to save the compromised Rachel. The agents are left with no choice but to bring Vogel to their apartment and plan a new extraction.
The agents take turns monitoring and feeding Vogel while leaving him chained to the wall heater. He attempts to psychologically humiliate and intimidate them to the point they must gag him. During his shift, David becomes violently enraged after Vogel explains his beliefs that Jews have many weaknesses, such as selfishness, making them easily subdued. David smashes a glass plate over Vogel's head and repeatedly beats him, only to be stopped and restrained by Stefan.
Later on, Stefan and David go out, leaving Rachel home to monitor Vogel by herself. After managing to cut through his bonds using a shard of the broken plate, Vogel ambushes Rachel with the shard, leaving her with a permanent scar on her face. Injured, she still manages to shoot the escaping doctor and sees him crumble to the ground after being hit. However, when they go to get rid of his body, they discover he has escaped into the night and the agents are left to assess their failure.
Panicking and hoping to save face for both him and for Israel, Stefan convinces Rachel and David to go along with the fiction that Vogel was killed. They agree to lie and use the cover story that Rachel shot and killed Vogel as he attempted to flee.
In the following years, the agents become venerated as national heroes for their roles in the mission. During a party in 1970, at the home of Rachel and Stefan (now married), Rachel confesses to David her distaste with her current life; Stefan puts his career and social status ahead of her while also punishing her for not loving him and having feelings for David. David admits his intention to leave Mossad and the country, imploring Rachel to come with him. Rachel cannot bring herself to abandon her daughter (the result of Rachel and Stefan's time together in hiding in East Germany) and she and David part ways.
At a dinner after their daughter's book release party, Stefan takes Rachel aside to set a meeting to discuss new information he has obtained. Later, at David's flat, Stefan provides evidence that Vogel now resides at an insane asylum in Ukraine and is soon scheduled to be interviewed by a local journalist.David had been investigating the man at Stefan's request and, according to Stefan, killed himself out of fear that the lie would be exposed. Rachel refutes Stefan's explanation, recalling an encounter with David a day before his suicide, in which he revealed his shame about the lie and disclosed that he had spent years unsuccessfully searching the world for Vogel. He was further disheartened by Rachel's admission that she would continue propagating the lie to protect those closest to her, particularly her daughter.
Nevertheless, at the direction of the modern-day Mossad, Rachel finally feels compelled to travel to Kiev to correct the mistake made by the trio. She investigates the journalist's lead and is able to identify and travel to the asylum. She reaches the room just minutes before the journalist and discovers the man claiming to be Vogel is an impostor, a senile old man who apparently fancies the notoriety. Describing the encounter to Stefan over the phone, Rachel declares she will not continue to lie about the 1965 mission. She leaves a note for the journalist and prepares to leave, but suddenly spots the real Vogel (in his 80s by now) among the other patients and follows him to an isolated area of the hospital.
After a confrontation in which Vogel stabs her twice with scissors, Rachel kills Vogel by plunging a poisoned syringe into his back. As she limps from the asylum, Rachel's note is discovered and read by the journalist. It describes the truth of the mission, ready to be relayed to the world
