Finish mars rest of credible tale of Israeli raid At a glance
Movies go bad in all kinds of ways, but in “7 Days in Entebbe,” the filmmakers found a brand-new way for their movie to commit suicide.
It happens, remarkably, in a jaw-dropping flame-out in the final 10 minutes.
Until then, “7 Days in Entebbe” is a gripping historical thriller, re-creating the terrorist hijacking of an Air France airliner in 1976 and the hostage drama that followed.
As anyone who buys a ticket to the movie will know, the drama culminated in a stunning rescue operation by Israeli commandos. It’s not a film that moviegoers watch while wondering how it might turn out. It’s a film moviegoers watch while looking forward to the end.
Indeed, a full half of the experience of “7 Days in Entebbe” is anticipating the big finish.
But the big finish proves to be ridiculous. Yes, the film depicts the rescue operation, but it does so sparingly, just a few glimpses here and there. And it inter-cuts the rescue scene with a modern dance performance. So it’s a few seconds of gun shots and a few seconds of dancing to noisy percussive music — back and forth, back and forth, until you want to find director Jose Padilha, sit him down in a chair and yell “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?” until the movie ends.
Apparently, one of the soldiers, Yoni Netanyahu, brother of the future president, had a girlfriend in a modern dance troupe. And for some reason, either Padilha or the screenwriters or both thought it would be a nifty idea to show her performing while the raid takes place: Somebody gets shot in Entebbe, and someone onstage falls down.
Give the filmmakers credit for having a novel idea. But there’s a reason that no one had tried this before: The Directed by Jose Padilha.
PG-13 (for violence, some thematic material, drug use, smoking and brief strong language) 1:47 at the Crosswoods, Drexel, Dublin 18, Easton 30, Lennox 24 and Polaris 18 theaters
idea was horrible.
Until then,“7 Days in Entebbe” is a credible and arresting slice of history. The Air France jumbo jet, bound for Tel Aviv, is hijacked by German terrorists with ties to the Red Army Faction. They want to make a statement on behalf of the Palestinians, and they think that the Israeli government will release the terrorists held in prisons in exchange for the hostages.
As portrayed here, Wilfried Bose (Daniel Bruhl) is a misguided zealot, but not a murderer, while Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) is a more enigmatic figure, by turns empathetic and fanatical.
The terrorists also had the idea that it would be harder for the Israelis to use force if the hostages were held outside Israel, particularly in a strange, unaligned country such as Idi Amin’s Uganda. Nonso Anozie, who appears several times in the film as Amin, is fascinating to watch.
The movie follows the crisis over its seven days, with several flashbacks to fill in details. Just as dramatic as the scenes in Uganda are the deliberations within the Israeli cabinet between Yitzhak Rabin — a forthright former soldier, as played by Lior Ashkenazi — and Simon Peres (Eddie Marzan), a wily politician.
Peres wants to attempt the rescue, and Rabin, who ultimately must decide, is less sure.
Remembering the good in “7 Days in Entebbe” is a little like remembering the first act of “Our American Cousin.” It starts out well, but, in light of subsequent events, it doesn’t much matter.