‘7 Days in Entebbe’ solid, but more than necessary
Compared to ISIS and the 9/11 perpetrators, plane-hijacking terrorists were slightly kinder and gentler back in 1976. At least they debated whether to kill their hostages — and dithered about it long enough for a rescue mission to be mounted.
Not to sound like an excessively bleeding-heart progressive. I’m not saying, as a psychologist once did of Jeffrey Dahmer, that “head-boilers are people, too.” I’m just sayin’…
“7 Days in Entebbe” re-tells the tale of an Air France flight with 248 passengers, hijacked en route from Tel Aviv to Paris by German radicals Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and Daniel Bruhl (Wilfried Bose) and two Palestinians on June 27, 1976.
After forcing the pilot to land in Entebbe, the hijackers and their hostages are pleasantly welcomed by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie), who was informed of things in advance and relishes his prestigious go-between role: The hijackers demand release of 40 Palestinian militants jailed in Israel. The non-Israeli passengers are flown out to Paris. Ninty-four Jewish passengers and the 12-member crew remain as hostages, herded into a sealedoff area of the terminal where they await news of whether the Israeli government — contrary to its ironclad policy — will negotiate for their release.
Compelling scenes of frightened passengers and their captors abound, but the larger drama takes place in Tel Aviv, where calculating Defense Minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) and conflicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) each jockey to secure the hostages’ release in a way that best serves his own political advantage.
Meanwhile, back at the radical runway ranch in Entebbe, there are personal as well as political issues between Kuhlmann and Bruhl, and between those Euro antiZionistintellectuals and their jihadist cohorts.
“You’re here because you hate your country,” says one of the latter to one of the former. “I’m here because I love mine.”
The heroic nighttime liberation has been filmed previous times, most notably “Raidon Entebbe” (1976, with Peter Finch), “Victory at Entebbe” (1976, with Anthony Hopkins) and — by far the best — Menahem Golan’s “Operation Thunderbolt” (1977,with Klaus Kinski).
The one at hand is based on Saul David’s “Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History” (2015), reportedly containing hitherto unavailable classified information.
Ms. Pike is effective, alternately focused and dazed in her commitment to the leftist cause. Dennis Menochet gives the film’s best performance as the Air France flight engineer. Mr. Anozie makes the most of his brief comic-relief moments as Idi Amin — a pompous ferret thinking he can broker negotiations between lions and tigers.
Director Jose Padilha’s one fine artistic stroke is his use of a stunning piece of dance theater, performed by the Batsheva Dance Company, as a crosscutting device to heighten and metaphorically enhance the tension. If you go, make sure to stay through the credits for its full effect.
FYI: All of the hijackers, three of the hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed in the operation — but just one Israeli soldier: unit commander Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu (Angel Bonanni), the elder brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both of them served in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit that conducted the raid.
Bottom line: “7 Days in Entebbe” is a serious, thought-provoking attempt to get the behind-the-scenes details straight. But I’m not sure it was really necessary. And I’m not sure its effort to “humanize” the misguided anti-Semitic German radicals behind it really works.