Movie Review: '7 Days in Entebbe'

On July 3, 2018, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Amblin Partners released 7 Days in Entebbe, a taut but somewhat offbeat dramatization of the hijacking of Air France jet by a team of pro-Palestinian terrorists, its journey from Tel Aviv to Entebbe – a city in Uganda – and the events that led to one of history’s most daring rescue missions: Operation Thunderbolt, aka Operation Entebbe.

Wilfried Böse: We don't want to hurt anybody. We're humanitarians.

Written by Gregory Burke (’71) and helmed by Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha (Elite Squad; the 2014 remake of Robocop), this Focus Features film – released in the UK as Entebbe – premiered in theaters in March of 2018 and stars German-Spanish actor Daniel Brühl and Rosamunde Pike as Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, the two German hijackers who helped two Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO) operatives commandeer Air France Flight 139 and, after a roundabout journey that took the Airbus 300 from the Mediterranean to Libya and ended at the old abandoned terminal at Entebbe International Airport, in Uganda.

Though 7 Days in Entebbe is not the first depiction of Operation Entebbe made for theatrical release or television – Marvin J. Chomsky (Holocaust) directed an ABC-TV movie titled Victory at Entebbe only a few months after the daring raid, while Irvin Kershner (Star Wars – Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back) and Menahem Golan helmed two productions (NBC-TV’s Raid on Entebbe and Cannon Films-Warner Bros. Pictures’ Operation Thunderbolt) in 1977 – Padilha’s take on the hijacking, the failed attempts to solve the crisis by diplomacy, and the raid on Entebbe is both cinematically ambitious and dramatically uneven.

An act of terrorism leads to one of the most daring rescue missions ever attempted. When a commercial flight is hijacked in 1976 and diverted to an abandoned terminal at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, the terrified passengers become bargaining chips in a deadly political standoff. As the likelihood of finding a diplomatic solution fades, an elite group of commandos hatch a fearless plot to rescue the hostages before time runs out. Daniel Brühl (Captain America: Civil War), Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) and Eddie Marsan (Atomic Blonde) star in this riveting thriller inspired by true events. – 7 Days in Entebbe Blu-ray back cover blurb

My Take 

 I’m not going to devote a great deal of space to the plot of 7 Days in Entebbe; suffice it to say that except for a few – and perhaps unavoidable – visual goofs, such as the use of a later model of Airbus jet than the actual A-300 used by Air France in 1976 and the usual continuity errors that show up in most movies. Suffice it to say that screenwriter Burke and director Padilha stick closely to the broad strokes of the historical record, without the sense of “historical fiction” that pervades in Steven Spielberg’s thematically similar Munich.  

On the positive side of the coin, 7 Days in Entebbe does several things well. First, the production team took great pains to recreate the look of the late 1970s during the making of the film. With rare exceptions – like the more modern Airbus jet seen in the film – the costumes, props, and set decorations are all made to look like they were made and used in that particular time in history. We see a lot of cigarette smoking going on – in 1976 the anti-smoking campaigns that shaped today's “smoke-free” public environment were in their infancy, and most adults smoked constantly. 

And Entebbe’s cinematographer, Lula Carvalho, studied films such as Taxi Driver and The Godfather to get that “shot-in-the-1970s” look that immerses the viewer in the story Padilha wants to tell. 

The film also works well as an action thriller, especially after it reaches the point in the story where the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Leon Ashkenazi)- through intermediaries – and Uganda’s pro-Palestinian dictator Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie) fail and Israel has no choice but to go with a military option.

However, the movie loses its momentum due to some misguided – and controversial – artistic choices made by Padilha and the creative team of Entebbe.

The first misstep the filmmakers made with 7 Days in Entebbe was the questionable choice to interweave the otherwise conventional political-action thriller plot with a stylistic dance performance by the Batsheva Dance Company, an Israeli modern dance troupe. Here, Padilha features the dancers in a performance of the traditional Jewish song Echad Mi Yodea, which begins during the main title sequence and is intercut with the “main plot” of the movie at odd times.

There is, oddly enough, a plot-important reason for the inclusion of the Batsheva Dance Company, but the intercutting of the dance with, say, the commando raid at Entebbe is strange and visually disorienting.

Another issue I have with this otherwise interesting film is its habit of having characters give a soliloquy – of sorts – stating his or her political position, then repeat it, and then someone else will stand up on a soapbox (metaphorically speaking) and recite another politically-charged dissertation. It’s as if Burke and Padilha (who was only 9 in 1976) don’t trust the audience to understand the history and the politics that were the wellspring of the hijacking – as well as the divided world-view regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Brigitte Kuhlmann: Anyone who tries to resist me will be shot.

 7 Days in Entebbe is one of those vexing films that show a great deal of promise, yet somehow fumble dramatically by trying to do too many things at once. In Entebbe, Padilha seeks to tell a “balanced” account of the hijacking and Israel’s response by giving equal time to all of the participants. The film spends more time with Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, the German duo that helped the PLFP-EO terrorists take over the plane than any of the other dramatizations of the event that I’ve seen.  Here, Daniel Brühl’s Böse comes across as a conflicted idealist who realizes he is in over his head in this mission. Pike’s  Kuhlmann, too,  sees that she may be swimming in deeper water than she’d anticipated, but she’s forced to act like her partner’s Lady Macbeth and make him “man up.”

I don’t think that  Padilha, a Brazilian, means to promote the Palestinians’ anti-Israeli agenda, but his choices to give a more “balanced” account of the events and water down the rescue sequences with the intercutting of the Echad Mi Yodea dance seem to telegraph a more ambiguous outlook about Operation Entebbe and – in the wider view – the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, 7 Days in Entebbe is a tale full of sound and fury, but with that surrealistic ending, signifies very little.