7 Days in Entebbe

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.

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

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.

'Entebbe' is a film that should have worked and should have been good. It had a very talented cast, it is hard not to go wrong with Daniel Bruhl, Rosamund Pike and Eddie Marsan judging from a lot of their previous work. It also is based on and tells of a remarkable and hard-hitting true story.

While not a terrible film, despite sharing all of many people's complaints of 'Entebbe' it is not as quite as bad to me as some have made out because there are a few plus points, 'Entebbe' should have been much better and that it screwed up in such an underwhelming manner is frustrating. It really does not do this incredible story justice and the cast are all better than this and deserved better. Didn't come out feeling insulted or offended watching 'Entebbe', at the same time the film left me disappointed and frustrated.

There are plus points here. Daniel Bruhl and Rosamund Pike actually fare very well in the lead roles. While Bruhl's as expected thoughtful, gravitas-filled and charismatic performance keeps one glued Pike impressed me more in the more challenging role (including having a German accent, not an easy one to master and one stereotyped very variably a lot, and having apparently to learn German, thought though she was fluent in the language already) and the one that the film tries most to develop.

'Entebbe' starts off intriguingly and there are parts where the production values have slickness and atmosphere. There is one scene that did have emotional impact and did leave me haunted, that was Pike's phone scene.

However, the rest of the cast don't fare so well and it is largely down to the way the characters are written. Eddie Marsan is just bizarre and how Peres is written and characterised felt wrong and out of kilter. Nonso Anozie is nowhere near sinister enough as Amin, the man was a monster and Anozie completely fails to bring that on screen. Ben Schnetzer's role doesn't make sense and felt under-developed. The chemistry between the actors is very disconnected, on the most part this is including between Bruhl and Pike through no fault of their own.

It's not the cast that are to blame here. The one-sided and biased way the roles are written, including trying to humanise the lead characters, making Peres' and Amin's roles one-dimensional and painting the Palestinians in an objectionable light, is more of a problem. Even when trying to tell the events from multiple, even all, view-points which fails to tell one very much and quickly became over-stuffed.

As is the less than taut and rather preachy script, that runs out of steam far too quickly and it constantly feels we are running in circles with nothing new being told and being told the obvious and the same thing more than once. The direction is both pedestrian and gimmicky, often muddled and like not-knowing-what-to-do-with-the-material standard, and too often the production values are drab and dizzying, the slow motion in the final raid was not necessary, trivialised the already too downplayed violence and made me feel uncomfortable. The scene should have been tense but was anything but, feeling too much like an afterthought.

Much has also been made of the use and cross-cutting of modern dancing. This was overused, out of place, gimmicky and not even that well choreographed. It really diluted what little tension there already was and it made it very hard to take the film seriously. Found it very annoying and even disrespectful that 'Entebbe' had this suspense-filled and riveting story and make it dull and devoid of tension and suspense, with what should have been the most prominent and compelling events (the planning of the raid and the raid itself especially) being given short shrift and treated in a far too safe manner. What was more prominent and significantly less interesting was handled turgidly and in a biased fashion. It felt like there was little at stake when there was actually a huge amount.

Overall, a disappointing film that has pluses but also a lot of minuses. The cast and the story deserved better. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Most of us (including me), when we heard about the new film 7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE, thought to themselves "didn't they just make this film a few years ago...?" The answer is yes. A similar film to this - RAID ON ENTEBBE - was a TV movie made a few years ago - 42 years ago, to be precise. It starred Peter Finch, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden and good ol' Charles Bronson. Made a mere few months after the true events, this slapped together movie was an old-fashioned "shoot 'em up."

This film is most definitely not.

7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE tells the true story of the 1976 Air France Hijacking of (mostly) Israeli citizens that settle in Entebbe, Uganda (under the leadership of crazed dictator Idi Amin) - refusing to negotiate with terrorists, the Israeli government plan, stage and execute a daring rescue mission.

Sounds like a pretty good plot for a Charles Bronson shoot-em-up.

In this version, Director Jose Padilha (the 2014 remake of ROBOCOP) decides to focus most of his attention not on the hijacked Israeli citizens, but rather, a pair of German hijackers juxtaposed against the political infighting in Israel between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres. The Israeli governmental infighting was interesting to watch with intriguing characters and cat-and-mouse back-stabbing politics while the plight of the kidnappers was underwritten and underwhelming. Consequently, this film was "just okay".

Oh...and it had about an hour-fifteen minutes of content stretched over an hour-forty-five minutes, so to stretch things out, Padilha decided to cut back and forth between the action (what there was of it) and a modern dance recital. Clearly he was trying a metaphor of the dance punctuating the emotions and actions elsewhere. It just didn't work for me.

Neither did this film. Skip this one and check out the Charles Bronson shoot-em-up.

Letter Grade C+

5 (out of 10) stars and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)