ReelBob: ‘7 Days in Entebbe’ ★½

By Bob Bloom

“7 Days in Entebbe” had the potential for being a first-rate thriller, if it could have maintained its focus on the primary story.

Instead, the film is like a child in a roomful of new toys — the kid just goes from one to another without actually concentrating on a single object.

The movie is based on the 1976 hijacking by German and Palestinian radicals of an Air France flight with more than 200 passengers, of whom more than 80 were Israeli or Jewish.

The terrorists ordered the plane flown at first to Libya; then, to Entebbe in Uganda, where they planned to exchange the passengers for Palestinians and Germans — political prisoners, in their view — being held by the Israeli and German governments.

In itself, this would have served as a solid feature. Instead, director José Padilha and writer Gregory Burke have created an inert and pretentious mish-mash of clichéd characters and situations.

From the outset, you know that Padilha and Burke are trying to make a STATEMENT! The movie opens with an Israeli dance troupe on a bare stage, rehearsing a piece that has some meaning, but for the life of me I could not understand its message — if any.

From there, the scene shifts to the airport in Athens, Greece, where the hijackers board the plane and, after takeoff, successfully seize the aircraft.

The two main hijackers, played by Daniel Brühl and Rosamund Pike, are German leftists — more idealists than pragmatists, who perceive their actions as a political statement rather than an act of terror.

And, basically, that is all we know about them. They, like the two Palestinians aiding them, are archetypes. They all are defined by their actions and rhetoric and are not fully developed as individuals.

“7 Days in Entebbe” continually shifts between the airport lounge in Entebbe, where the passengers are held, to flashbacks, detailing how Brühl’s Wilfried Bose and Pike’s Brigitte Kulhmann decided upon the hijacking, to Israel, where we get tedious moments of political debate and machinations between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres over the nation’s response options.

Forgotten in all of this are the passengers, who are mainly used as pawns in this lumbering chess match. We learn very little about them, and that dilutes the horror of what they experienced.

The film offers too much speechifying and too little action. Even the famous raid, in which Israeli commandos rescued the hostages, is filmed in an ordinary manner that diminishes its impact.

The irony of the film rests in a line by the leader of the Israeli forces tasked with the rescue mission, who tells his troops, “Surprise and speed are the key.” Padilha and Burke ignored their own advice.

“7 Days in Entebbe” should keep you on the edge of your seats. Instead, it makes you sit back and doze off.

I am a member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My reviews appear at ReelBob (reelbob.com) and Rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). I also review Blu-rays and DVDs. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com or on Twitter @ReelBobBloom. Links to my reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE
1½ stars out of 4
(PG-13), violence, language, smoking, drug use, adult themes