Opération Thunderbolt : L'Esprit d'Entébbé

This is an amazing retelling of Israel's great Entebbe victory. It doesn't sink into melodrama, but shows us how all the pieces were brought together for this singular achievement. Exciting, gripping, and with a sense of realism rarely seen.

Mivtza Yehonatan (or as it is better known around the world, Entebbe Operation), in which the Israeli army managed to take over the Entebbe airport in Uganda, to free all hostages of the kidnapped Air France plane and to bring (almost) everybody home in one piece, is a story told a million times over, was made into a very bad Hollywood action movie and was used as the basis for countless B-movies. This version, however, is unique. To begin with, many of the key characters of the operation (Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yigal Alon, all of whom played key rolls in the decision making process of this operation) were acting as themselves. Secondly, the Israeli army actively participated in the making of the movie, thus making the level of realism higher than most other action movies ever made. Third, Yoram Globus, in his break-through movie (that opened the gates of big-time Hollywood for him) proves that he can direct a good action movie, based on a great story, and coming out on top of his game.

All in all, a great movie to watch.

9 out of 10 in my book-keeping.

Following my recent viewing of Israeli director Moshe' Mizrahi's French movie MADAME ROSA – the 1977 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film – I decided to watch the only remaining contender in that category sooner rather than later. As it turned out, the official Israeli entry was the weakest of the five final selections and I am guessing that its sheer topicality – being based on a very recent hijacking episode that had grabbed world headlines – was what made it jump ahead of other notable competitors among the 24 international Oscar submissions, namely Larisa Shepitko's THE ASCENT, Wim Wenders' THE American FRIEND, Bo Widerberg's THE MAN ON THE ROOF (1976), Paul Verhoeven's SOLDIER OF ORANGE and Krzysztof Zanussi's CAMOUFLAGE.

For the record, my relative disappointment with OPERATION THUNDERBOLT has just been exacerbated by my discovering that I had acquired and watched the U.S. Theatrical Version (culled from a TV screening on the MGM channel) – which has characters mostly speaking their lines in English, barring the occasional lapses into French and German – rather than the original version which has characters (be they Israeli, German, French or African) rightfully speaking in their native tongue...and which is available as a "Full Movie" video on "You Tube" and on a renowned torrent download site! Having said that, craggy-faced chief hijacker Klaus Kinski's equally distinctive voice can be heard in both versions but, apart from his trigger-happy cohort Sybil Danning and nemesis Assaf Dayan (as the Israeli commando second-in-command), he is the only recognizable name in the cast...that is, if one is to discount the personal, silent appearances of the Israeli politicians that faced the crisis in real life, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres; in any case, the acting honours here are stolen by Yehoram Gaon as the ill-fated commando leader Yonatan Netanyahu (who, at one point, is amusingly seen reading Alistair MacLean's "Circus" - a novel I also read myself as a kid). This sharply contrasts with the contemporaneous, star-studded, rival re-enactments of the events for U.S. TV, namely VICTORY AT ENTEBBE (1976; which I had intended watching last year for Burt Lancaster's centenary but had to jettison it due to time constraints) and RAID ON ENTEBBE (1977) – both of which, incidentally, also exist in longer and shorter edits.

While the fact that the viewer is aware from the outset of the narrative's outcome can perhaps lead to the film feeling rather predictable, the presence of a surprisingly restrained Kinski (billed "Kinsky" in the all-English opening credits!) and Danning make up for that; on the other hand, while the final assault on Entebbe airport occurs towards the very end of the film and can thus appear to be a long time coming, the swift depiction of it is quite electrifying (especially the sight of Kinski's twitching body as it expires early on in a hail of machine-gun bullets). Seeing the names of commercial 1980s Hollywood entity Cannon Group founders Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus among the makers of this film somewhat undermine its proposed authenticity (shot with the full co-operation of the Israeli government and Air Force); indeed OPERATION THUNDERBOLT (which, decades afterwards, also became the name of a video game!) succeeds more as an action movie than a psychological or political thriller which might not have been congenial to this particular subject but serves as a veritable template for the later Cannon Group star-studded blockbuster THE DELTA FORCE (1986; also helmed by Golan and easily Chuck Norris' most prestigious star vehicle) complete with overblown rousing music throughout.

Golan & Globus at their best, which is to say it's a mediocre movie. A one and a half hour movie crammed into two hours.

I was surprised they didn't have an epilogue, since it's history it would have been nice. Not nearly as good or as historic as "Raid on Entebbe."

It's only bad enough to be entertaining in a few spots. Klaus Kinski is wasted and Sybil Danning is dressed with HUGE sunglasses and a potato sack for a dress.

While peace in the middle east seems as far away now as it did in 1949, you gotta hand it to em that they sure can still make a hell of a good movie.

While the actual operation of the 1976 rescue of the 100+ hostages held at Entebbe airport is not probed into as much with this film as with RAID ON ENTEBBE, this is the infinitely more fun one of the two to watch. Dov Seltzer's music is really the star with this film, particularly with the really cool opening theme which plays in many variations whenever Yoni is onscreen and the theme that plays at Entebbe airport whenever it shows the guards standing around, etc. The music works best during Yoni's death scene (this is no spoiler since the events of the film are historically accurate, and pretty well-known too) where it really takes his usual theme but drags it out to sound all tragic. Gotta love the ultra-70's style filming and editing. Lots of zoom-ins and odd use of models, stock footage, and stand-ins which is sometimes cheesy, but always entertaining in some way. It's all pretty standard stuff until the ending battle, which is handled in a very high-octane way as opposed to RAID ON ENTEBBE, where they did a lot of standing around and things tended to work out better (It would be more interesting to know which of the two is more historically accurate).

Klaus Kinski and Sybil Danning are the other stars here. Their problem though is that they are underused. Klaus doesn't act quite crazy enough (though he does a lot of running around and has a really cool death scene), and Sybil Danning's stunning unearthly beauty is not exploited enough, hidden behind poofy hair, bulky dress, and a large pair of sunglasses. One might be angry at watching this and not getting their full Kinski or Danning's-worth, but it's better than not having them here at all.

The authenticity involved in much of the rest of the film is amazing, with Rabin and Peres doing some acting (though they never speak, on-camera and the scenes where people are talking to them look suspiciously like they used doubles) and supposedly 12 of the original hostages returned to reprise their roles in this film. However, it goes out of its way to demonize the PLO, Che Guevaranians, and Idi Amin (though with him that's another story). Everything with the villains is a lot darker and more mean-spirited than in RAID ON ENTEBBE, but it all works to make this film more fun. Just take it as entertainment and not as fact, because of course it was the winners that made this. Just a fun and fast-paced little forgotten movie. Where's the DVD?