7 Days In Entebbe Movie Review

7 Days In Entebbe
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl, Vincent Cassel, Eddie Marsan, Ben Schnetzer, Lior Ashkenazi, Denis Menochet
Director: Jose Padilha
Rating:

Jose Padilha's superfluous reboot of the daring 1976 raid by Israeli counterterrorist forces to rescue 102 hostages from a hijacked Air France flight out of Tel Aviv is far more lenient to the terrorists than the captives taken hostage for an ideology that in itself sounds defeatist. The point-of-view here is largely of the terrorists and makes the entire drama a pawn of retributive politics.

There were more than 240 passengers on board when the plane was hijacked by German radicals hoping to aid the Palestinian cause but their own internal conflict and guilt regarding a historic past horror leaves them battling an inner war that doesn't come through all that clearly.

Writer Gregory Burke's screenplay tries to include poetry and movement as a juxtaposition offsetting the top-secret Israeli raid about to ensue. Though the Batsheva dance company's rehearsals and final performance is quite powerful, it fails to add tension or edginess to the narrative which attempts to criss-cross between the dance elements and the stealthy movement of the forces in the thick of night. The symbolism arrived thereof of tortured liberation is not forceful enough though.

There's, in fact, no real reason for this revisit that comes years after it's better predecessors including Victory at Entebbe, Raid on Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt, not to mention several documentaries. There's neither dynamism or dramatic complexity to be had here. And even the gritty performances fail to lift the film to greater heights. This is a failed endeavour at best!

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