7 Days in Entebbe

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source: 7 Days in Entebbe

Unfortunately, this film about the 1976 hijacking of an AirFrance flight by German and Palestinian terrorists who demanded Israel's release of Palestinian militants and a $5 million ransom is thoroughly mishandled and wastes its powerful acting talent. Things start out sharply enough. The film wastes no time getting to the hijacking itself and taking things from there. The planning and training for it is revealed through flashbacks. But what follows is a narrative that loses its thrust and becomes quite devoid of any dramatic force. It becomes talky and plodding. There isn't much sense that the more than 200 hostages taken are ever in that much physical danger. When a French airline engineer asks "How is this going to work?" you might wonder if he is asking about the film itself. I cannot fault Daniel Bruhl, Rosamund Pike or Eddie Marsan. They each do their best as two German hijackers and Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres respectively. They cannot save a screenplay that loses its power and fails to remain compelling. By the end, even the actors themselves seem to just want it to be over. A scene with one of the hijackers at a public phone exemplifies this perfectly. There are some plot threads/characters in this film that made no sense. For one thing, it was not clear at all who the Israeli solider is who is played by this young actor Ben Schnetzer. He has a number of scenes in this film, but who he is never becomes known. If you check the cast section on this film's page, it appears IMDB doesn't know either. Who can blame them? If he's an unknown, what is his girlfriend? To describe them as weakly-defined characters would be quite charitable. There is a choreography sequence that coincides with a key military operation in this story, but its connection and its supposed analogy to the core events portrayed here is amorphous and even nonsensical. This is not a film that I regret seeing, but it's quite frustrating how an account of real life events could be phoned in the way it is here. It's a textbook example of a seemingly unfinished film. Not recommended.

A rough and radical history film about the hijacking of the Air France flight in the late 70s. The story is told mostly out of the perspective of two of the terrorist, who were german and part of the Baader-Meinhof complex. Daniel Brühl plays the leade who more and more questions what is happening and actually realizes they did a mistake. Rosamund Pike plays his partner who uses the mission to prove herself as a radical. Pike plays a german character. Her accent at first is a bit weird but it improves during the film a lot. Generally she delivers a good performance but besides one of her last scenes (the phone scene) she was rather a bit one-dimensional and underused. Daniel Brühl's character is better written and Brühl delivers a fine and thoughtful performance. Eddie Marsan had just one facial expression and tone of voice during the whole film. He can do better. Jose Padilha was delves a fine direction. Especially the mixture with the symbolic dance scenes which served as a metaphor were amazing. You felt a bit bad to associate with the two leads and actuallly feel slight sympathy. Also there were some little lengths. But all in all its a pretty good film with a topic that once again is just as relevant as it was back in 1976....

I completely understand that this movie may not be totally historicaly accurate and believe me, as a history buff, I prefer accuracy. But in all honesty I had never had of this story and I wasn't taught about it in school. This movie made me interested in learning about this hostage crisis and more about the Irasile-Palestine relationship. I thought the graphics, cinematography, acting, and story development were all done nicely. It's good that we have independent films, like 7 Days, that may not be big blockbusters or another superhero movie. Definitely check it out.

OMG.... This movie is just plain...TERRIBLE! SPOILER ALERT Firstly, that whole dance/choreography thing was just...plain...dumb. Had zero tie in to the event and made very very little (if any) contribution to the movie. Secondly, the planning and execution of the raid was minimalized at best. And the whole depiction of the raid from landing on was just a joke. There must have been zero research done on this real event or the producer just decided to chuck factual correctness and credibility in the trash can. No emphasis on just how secret this whole operation had to be from planning to practice to execution. And the whole discussion between the commando and his girlfriend about the operation was downright ludicrous. They were ALL sworn to severe secrecy so as not to jeopardize the mission. The way the movie depicted the C-130s all lit up during and after landing at Entebbe was ridiculous. They landed lights out and all the way to touchdown and were preparing for the runway lights to be snuffed out anytime by suspicious control tower personnel who knew the raid had came. So they damn sure didn't sit out on the lit runways with the airplanes all lit up as the troops and vehicles deplaned. They did all of that lights out. And yet another thing; the raiders penetrated the terminal in small squads from multiple entry points - NOT as one mass of soldiers moving in as one big blob. One grenade or good burst of machine gun fire would've killed all the Israelis if they'd really moved in one big formation like that across the tarmac and into the building. Thirdly, the movie paid zero tribute to the hostages as individuals - Dora Bloch's story alone would've shown what a lunatic and monster Amin REALLY was. And for that matter, the character development of Amin in this story was all but non-existent. In fact, character development in this whole flick was all but non-existent and cheesy when it was tried. To me, this whole movie was a giant human interest piece to try and show a compassionate side to the hostage takers - at least the German pair - and therefore drum up some sympathy or kinder feelings about people who were homicidal maniacs. And at the same time the show minimizes what a tremendous feat it was for the Israelis to fly all that way and snatch the hostages right out of both the terrorists' and Amins hands. If you want to see a GOOD movie about this event, see the 1976 flick "Raid On Entebbe" with Yaphet Kotto playing Idi Amin. You'll learn more and have a more enjoyable viewing experience.

Great film that holds up pretty well in its attempt to stay neutral and explain personal motivations for both sides rather than putting labels, which is great considering the situation on the Middle East. Great acting. Purposely chosen slow pace helps in character development. There's absolutely nothing that I didn't like about this film PS I talked to some people who watch the movie in the same theater. They were very emotionally impacted. If it's not great filmmaking, then what is it?

I will forever remember the raid on Entebbe because this is what forced the majo players on the world stage form up military units to take care of terrorism and counter the terrorists attempt at hurting innocents. The movie's POV is more from a political and psychological view point and less from a military one. Knowing some of the military tactics I was slightly disappointed when, after Yoni Netanyahu is killed the film does not show the IDF taking out the tower of the old terminal with an RPG (which they did in the real raid, or so I have read they did). Also one IDF squad took out the new terminal's tower with a recoilless rifle to isolate the sairport further. Minor points in general but to someone, like myself, who is into military tactics it would have been nice to see. Also, this film neglects the story of Dora Bloch who was taken from the Entebbe to a hospital in Uganda's capital and was never seen again, this 'glossing over' of her story was I think a sin of omission on the part of the filmmakers and should have been shown. As we left the theater my wife reminded me that independent films usually take a different view point, and this one did. Overall it was a good telling of the story, although the "Polubilis" dance scenes made no sense as did the comment about the absence of negotiations with Palestinians as of March 2018. Maybe in the wake of ISIS and Al Qaeda, the "freedom fighter" angle on these groups has worn thin.

This movie had a lot of potential because of the story it is based on but it focuses more on things that are hardy relevant to the story. Half of the time we follow this lady who like interpretative dance and we find out she gets the part that she has always wanted. During the rescue scene we jump back and forth between her dance recital and the rescue. The scene is very short and hardy shows any fighting at all even though 45 Ugandan guards died in the fight and only 1 of the good guys died. Those numbers only suggest a well planned out fire fight which I was expecting to see, however, whoever made this movie was not prepared to make a quasi war movie and show the rescue how it was supposed to be shown. At the end of the day this movie is just a huge build up to a huge nothing of an ending.