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Alison Rowat’s film reviews
Straightforward, action-packed tale goes off-course after too many detours
Dir: José Padilha
With: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Bruhl, Eddie Marsan Runtime: 107 minutes
FOR those who were not around in the Seventies (you didn’t miss much), Jose Padilha’s account of the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris contains a few shocking moments. Yes, in those pre-9/11 days it really was possible for armed terrorists to board flights and boot open cockpit doors.
Less welcome than the history lesson is Padilha’s draining of all tension in a tale so action-packed it has already been the subject of several other thrillers.
The first sign of filmmaking trouble to come lies in the opening scene of dancers going through a routine. Padilha then cuts to two terrorists, German left-wing revolutionaries Wilfried Bose and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Daniel Bruhl and Rosamund Pike), boarding the plane after a stopover in Greece. How the dance routine and the hijack are connected is anyone’s guess at this stage. But appearing to explore terrorism through the medium of contemporary dance is certainly an, er, interesting creative choice, one you hope the picture will soon drop and we can all pretend it did not happen. Alas, no such luck.
Once the flight is under way, Bose and Kuhlmann lose no time in getting down to their grisly business. The plan is to take the plane to Entebbe in Uganda, where dictator Idi Amin has agreed to give the terrorists safe haven while they issue demands to the Israeli government.
In Tel Aviv, cabinet opinion is divided on how to respond. Defence minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) urges a swift military rescue, while prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi), fearing fatalities among the hostages, considers negotiation.
The tension should be rising by the second, except it does not. Instead of building on what is there, Padilha, working from a screenplay by Scots writer Gregory Burke (responsible for the brilliant Black Watch and the outstanding drama that was ’71), allows the film to hare off in all directions.
As was the fashion in Seventies disaster movies, time is spent exploring
the lives and motivations of minor characters. But in those films the exploration came at the start and was used as a way to build tension. Look at these ordinary Joes, little do they know what lies ahead on this fateful day, etc.
In Entebbe, the detours, coming as they do in the middle of the picture, simply bring the action to a halt.
We do, mind you, get to find out the relevance of the dancers at the start: one of them is the girlfriend of a soldier on the raid. Doubtless, the dance itself was meant to convey some message about the search for peace in the Middle East, but I’m afraid the point passed me by. Whatever the reason for its inclusion, it hardly excuses the film’s over-reliance on it as a motif, most ludicrously when the raid on Entebbe unfolds.
Elsewhere, the exposition-heavy dialogue shifts from creaky to dull. The treatment given to Bruhl’s character, making him out to be appalled at how things were turning out, is forced and unconvincing, while Pike’s story hints at something interesting only to get lost amid the melee.
From Sky Premiere comes the glossy and engaging science fiction thriller Anon (15) ***. Clive Owen stars as Detective Sal Frieland, a cop whose job is made easier, if far more boring, by the fact that everyone’s every waking moment is recorded.
To find out whodunnit, Detective Frieland only has to hit rewind. But then along comes a killer who has no digital footprint. How can the police catch such a ghost in the machine?
Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, and also starring Amanda Seyfried as a super-hacker who comes to the attention of police, Anon makes good use of a limited budget by piling on the Philip K Dick-style glamour and ideas.
An intriguing watch, even if the too-clever-by-half story runs out of puff early on.
Exploring terrorism through the medium of modern dance is certainly an, er, interesting creative choice