7 Tage in Entebbe

A completely good film ruined by intermixing a pathetic dance routine (and the music) into the main assault. What was the director thinking.

The ending was annoying mostly because of the frequent crosscutting between the dancing sequences and the action taking place. I don't know what it was supposed to mean, but it was just irritating. And there was a subplot with one of the Israeli soldier and his girlfriend, that didn't add anything to the story, why it was included is a mystery to me. the storyline was good but the slow pace didn't help it.

On the contrary, 7 days in entembbe was well-acted, and the cinematography was awesome. the score was amazing but can be overbearing at times.

I am reading many negative reviews. It seems people want the hijackers to be uni-dimensional zealots. Any effort to humanize them or give their back story is repulsive to most. I disagree with most of these views. The movie is thoughtful, gives different viewpoints, and is well executed. The interspersing of the dance sequence added emotion and tension to a compelling story. Those who don't appreciate the art in a picture should watch the shoot emotion up 1970's version.

Written by Gregory Burke, and directed by José Padilha, Entebbe has met with near universally bad reviews (22% approval on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing), and while it is without doubt flawed, it's not nearly as bad as has been made out. Telling the story of the 1976 AirFrance hijacking by Palestinian and German revolutionaries, and subsequent Israeli Defence Force rescue mission (Operation Thunderbolt), the film is presented from multiple points of view; Revolutionäre Zellen members Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl), Israeli Minister for Defence Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan), Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi), IDF Pvt. Zeev Hirsch (Ben Schnetzer), AirFrance 1st Engineer Jacques Le Moine (Denis Ménochet), IDF Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu (Angel Bonanni), and Ugandan President Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie).

The problem is obvious; the film covers every point of view except the most important one; the Palestinian. Indeed, the only Palestinian given any kind of development is a fictional character played by Omar Berdouni, who talks of Israeli tanks driving over a car in which his family were trapped. And there are other strange omissions; the death of Dora Bloch (Trudy Weiss), murdered on Amin's orders after she was released in Kampala, is never mentioned, and Wadie Haddad is nowhere to be found. Additionally, the film doesn't have much of contemporaneous relevance to say in relation to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, other than alluding melancholically to the self-propagating nature of the violence, and the unlikelihood of peace (the closing legend points out that after he pushed for negotiations in 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist). However, it's aesthetically very well put together, and the juxtaposition of Thunderbolt with a Jewish dance number works much better than it has any right to. True, it doesn't get to the heart of the matter by any stretch of the imagination, and it could be accused of taking a pro-Israeli stance, but it's enjoyable enough, and worth a look.

I think I saw the trailer for this once in recent months so it definitely wasn't on my radar at all. Had some time to kill today, so guess what? Was hoping for a solid thriller based on a real life event. Sadly, the film fails to tell a rather interesting story with the spark it probably deserves. I can see why this film sort of just snuck into theaters without a lot of promotion. Its just not very good, and is a forgettable film about an event that could have been adapted better.

The film follows the real life events of two German terrorists (Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann) who along with a group of Palestinian terrorists, hijack an airplane in 1976 in Entebbe, Uganda. Their hopes are to receive a ransom of 5 million for the passengers on board and the freedom of Palestinian soldiers captured in Israel. The film follows negotiation efforts and the ultimate retrieval of the hostages by the Israeli operative forces.

I'm not very familiar with a lot of Jose Padilha's work but his Robocop remake was a definite misfire. Even here we have an interesting event and two very talented co-leads but a story that is just so dull and boring. While the film is shot well, the merits of the writing fall very short. Its hard to care for what goes on when the film doesn't really attempt to entice you with any thrill, action, or moments to make it memorable.

The relevance of the film and incident is that it mirrors the hostility between Israel and Palestine today, a conflict that has stretched for decades. Other than that, Entebbe has good intentions but fails. It doesn't exactly have a voice or make a statement but just recreates the event in a half hearted way. The best part was that weird dance sequence performance that kept going on during the film.

5.5/10