Arts
Film
A Misguided ‘7 Days in Entebbe’
7 Days in Entebbe is the latest screen adaptation of the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 and the successful rescue of the hostages by Israeli commandos. The film, which opens on March 16, is based on events that mesmerized the entire world 42 years ago. Its creative plotting, however, is proof that even great moments in Jewish and world history fade from memory, and thus when being retold are done so with poetic license.
For the record: In June 1976, two German members of the West German Revolutionary Cells and two Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine boarded Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris during a stopover in Athens. The four seized control shortly after takeoff and rerouted it to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where 248 passengers and 12 crewmembers were held and threatened with death unless 40 convicted Palestinian terrorists were released from an Israeli prison.
The dramatic and heroic rescue immediately inspired three films: ABC television’s Victory at Entebbe with Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Dreyfuss, Helen Hayes and Kirk Douglas in key roles. It aired the December after the hijacking.
Another made-for-TV production aired in 1977: NBC’s Raid on Entebbe with Charles Bronson as an Israeli general.
Finally, and possibly the most accurate in terms of look and feel, there was Operation Thunderbolt. (Known in Hebrew as Mivtsa Jonathan, Operation Jonathan, it was named in honor of commander Jonathan Netanyahu, the only Israeli soldier killed in the rescue). An Israeli film, it came out in 1977 and featured original footage of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
All three were shot during the immediate euphoria after the rescue, when Israel was viewed with admiration and before anti-Israel movements like BDS became fashionable on American campuses. It was a time when hijackings were rampant, and prevailing world sentiment was that killing innocents was wrong under any circumstances. In the films, the Israelis were heroes; the hijackers and Idi Amin, the Ugandan ruler who provided them safe haven, were not.
7 Days is different. In a misguided effort to be fair and balanced, it explores “the mindset of the hijackers themselves,” according to the film’s production notes. Since all the hijackers were killed, this means making things up.
The film suggests that the two Palestinians hijackers duped Germans Wilfried Böse (played by Daniel Brühl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike), who are viewed with some sympathy. In one ludicrous scene, Kuhlmann leaves the terminal where the hostages are being held, goes to another terminal and, placing a coin in a public telephone, seemingly dials up her boyfriend, Juan Pablo, back in Germany. She talks into the phone, expressing her reservations about the mission, until a passing stranger points out to her that the phone does not work.
Before she left Germany, Pablo had urged her not to participate in the hijacking: “How would it look,” he asks, “Germans killing Jews again?”
In another bit of artistic license, 7 Days opens with members of the Batsheva Dance Company performing to a stirring section of the Passover-time song “Echad Mi Yodea” (Who Knows One). The dance has only a tenuous connection to the rest of the film: In the altered reality created in the film, one of the dancers is the girlfriend of an Israeli commando who takes part in the raid. Watching the film, I had no idea why the dance was repeated several times, including during the closing titles.
Director José Padilha, however, saw symbolism in the scenes: As the dance progresses, the dancers take off their religious garb, he explained. “Metaphorically they’re shedding their orthodoxy. They’re breaking free from tradition by opening themselves up to new ideas that might contradict their old beliefs.”
Whether or not a viewer buys into Padilha’s suggestion that Jews should break clean from their traditions, the fact remains the dance had little to do with the substance of the film and, symbolism aside, just serves as a further distraction in an already slow-moving movie.
The action, such as there is, switches between the hostages and a dithering Israeli cabinet, where a political battle rages between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi), who favors negotiating, and his scheming defense minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan), who virtually backed Rabin into approving the rescue mission.
Unfortunately, with its pacing issues, 7 Days in Entebbe seems more like a long and distracted two weeks.
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Mark says
This misguided deliberate attempt to discredit true heros of this amazing successful mission and rather depict depraved terrorists as sensitive kind and thoughtful angels.
How pathetic can society become next Hitler will be depicted in a movie about the holocaust wearing a halo and dancing around in a ballet tutu singing songs from the prince of Egypt.
What a shameful attempt to deceive and pervert the truth.
Francisco Jose Hamilton Alves says
I could not agree more. Disgusting.
Avital says
Pathetic libtards and israeli leftists made this terribly stupid movie. Shame on you Rosy Pike for staring in this c**p, I’ve lost all respect for you
John S says
“Libtard” you trump sycophants are so utterly predictable! Thankfully, you’re also entertaining (in the same way watching the monkeys in the zoo hurl shit at each other is entertaining) if there’s one plus about that pathological liar/sociopath becoming president it’s that, as long as you pretend he isn’t destroying The USA’s respectability and endangering the future of humanity, there is constant hilarity amongst him and his cabinet and his electorate!
Phillip Hammond says
The fuck has this got to do with Trump?? Fucking moron, blame anything you disagree with on Trump – Mindless lefty tw@
David Alperovich says
Mark,
I think you’re reading too much into the movie’s attempt to show us everyone’s point of view. Showing the different views in all camps is not the same as condoning their actions.
Whether you liked the movie or not (i loved the movie’s depth and thoroughness in hitting all moving parts), don’t let the review’s author shape your thoughts.
Valeria says
Thank you!
Valeria says
One word about the author: biased.
D. Helton says
The movie totally misses the truth of Willie and Brigitte: rejected by the RAF because they were a pair of halfwits, they fell in with Carlos, who was happy at that time, after being booted out of Moscow, to find anybody willing to follow him. It’s common knowledge among spooks the Entebbe was a Carlos job with the halfwits being plain, simple mercenaries.
Heady Mindeded says
Wow these comments are so reductive. If you like it you are a “libtard” leftist and those attacking that somehow turn this into a Trump thing. Let’s pull back.
First, there are few people more anti-hijacker/anti-terrorist than myself. If I felt this were some sort of a love letter to them, I’d certainly say so. Having put out my anti-terror bonafides at the top, let’s get into how I feel about the MOVIE:
1) First, let’s just get this out there: the dance number is F*CKING STRANGE. It really makes no sense whatsoever, even the director’s (attempt at) commentary aside. It wasn’t so much offensive as weird and distracting. The entire movie would have no have been changed for the worse if they just cut that out. The subplot with the dancer GF is just unnecessary. Period.
2) The German hijackers: sympathy is not the word I would use for them. They come across as the misguided, out-of-their-element intellectuals they are, finally faced with having to put-up-or-shut-up to their high minded ideals. Thankfully, they (largely) shut up, shown for being the ineffectual halfwits they indeed are.
One of the better scenes– and decent dialogue– was when one of the Palestinian terrorists– and YES, that’s what they are– confronts Bose about how Bose is just some guilt ridden German soyboy who is doing this b/c he hates his country, whereas the Palestinian is doing it b/c he “loves his.” Yes, put aside there is no such thing as a country of Palestine, he could have changed the word to “homeland” to the same effect. Bose has no response to this b/c of course its correct.
The reviewer says b/c the hijackers are dead anything about their mindset is “made up.” I think that’s a simplification. There is historical record of what these people wrote and said and even some of the hostages have reported what they said to them. No one can get inside even a living person’s head so we can only rely on what people SAY. To that end, you don’t get the sense this was an unrealistic portrayal of these limp-wristed feckless morons.
FWIW at the end there is a moment where Bose says he will kill the hostages and then as the Israelis storm the place he yells at them to get down. This too is a matter of historical record. Does this make him a hero? Of course not. Sympathetic? Again, not the word I would use. Really just complicated. He deserved to be shot and killed but the entire ordeal lays him out to be the poseur you suspect he would be– and again, none of that is betrayed by the record.
3) The other terrorists / Idi Amin: The other terrorists are the Palestinians and you get a sense they too are out of their element but far more committed to the cause. They are FAR less sympathetic, again to co-opt that word, b/c they are so much more ruthless. Idi Amin comes across as less of the monster he was and more of the crazy moron he ALSO was. Again you don’t have sympathy for him but he also seems less complicit than he probably had to be. Regardless they are all minor characters and at most they serve to show how complicated putting all these competing interests together almost certainly was– and why they failed.
4) The Israelis: Another complex situation. First, understand Peres and Rabin are both played by Jews, Rabin by a very famous Israeli actor. One suspect they aren’t so dumb or race-trading they want to make Jews/Israelis look bad. Peres is played by British actor Eddie Marsan and he comes across as a squirrelly antagonist who wants to push around Rabin. He’s probably the LEAST sympathetic character and while I wouldn’t call it a problem with the movie, it’s not exactly endearing. That said, do I believe there were competing agendas/interests in that cabinet room? You better believe it. Do I believe Rabin, who ultimately would bear responsibility for failure and a former General himself, was racked with indecision and guilt? Yes, I do.
5) The flight engineer: A note should be mentioned about the flight engineer played by French actor Denis Ménochet. He does a good job playing the caught-in-the-crossfire workman trying to help unplug the toilets b/c, as he rightly says, “an engineer is worth 50 revolutionaries.” It took a minute but soon you realize Ménochet and the guy who plays Bose, Daniel Brühl, met before in another play on terrorizing Jews and their retribution: Inglourious Basterds. Ménochet plays the French farmer hiding Jews in his basement, Brühl as the German soldier who becomes the basis for a movie-within-the-movie. They are both good foreign actors we don’t see much and individually and together, they play well here.
To those looking for a 2D drama on this– where the terrorists aren’t revealed as ANYTHING more than evil (which of course they are, but they are also flawed people), and everyone else is a hero, like a shoot-em-up action movie– I suppose you will be disappointed. But this is real life, not an action movie and having just revisited the Spielberg masterpiece on Palestinian terror/Israeli retribution, Munich, you won’t find that there EITHER. The Palestinians/terrorists are NOT cardboard cutouts in that picture either– see the scene in the safe house, which reads a lot like the scene between the Entebbe Palestinians and Bose. The conflicting loyalties of people like the information broker reveal a much more complex story– which it unquestionably is. If you want to call that “sympathizing” go ahead. I just callout simplistic and ultimately incorrect– and I say that again, as someone who hates terrorists as much as anyone and, yes, calls them by that name.
To the extent there’s a “morality play” here it’s that between negotiating vs not, with the former attached here as linked to an interest in peace and the latter against it. That’s CERTAINLY reductive and a failing of the director. The end credits show that Peres, the supposed bloodthirsty hawk, eventually saw the “error of his ways” (paraphrasing) and became interested in peace later in life. And how when the movie came out in 2018 there were no peace negotiations. Ugh, that could have been left out too. First of all– two things can be true at once: you can want to negotiate with LEGITIMATE POLITICAL LEADERS for peace and NOT hijackers. It seems crazy that needs to be said– but apparently we have to. It’s really a dumb commentary but again, thankfully, it doesn’t affect how you see the movie as you watch it. I found myself far more interested than the reviewers suggested I would b/c I took it for what it was: a movie, a dramatization, and I looked at it through the lens of not what I WANTED it to be, but rather whether I felt it portrayed what may indeed have happened. On that score, it delivers. There’s nothing about the movie that seems contrived (outside the dancing) or unrealistic. It seems like the complex boiling pot it probably was and in the end, the sad thing it was. Of course it’s great the hostages were (mostly) saved. But it’s sad it happened in the first place, even as its good the “bad guys” get what they deserve here.