User reviews

In July 1976, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris gets hijacked on a stopover in Athens. The leaders of the group are Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and book publisher Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl). They are German revolutionaries trying to reclaim the initiative after their group faced setbacks at home. They are joined by Palestinians looking for revenge against the Jewish state. They force the plane to fly to Entebbe, Uganda where they have friendly unstable dictator in President Idi Amin. In Israel, defense minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) pushes for aggressive action while Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is cautious in the face of overwhelming odds.

This true crime thriller is 2/3 great and 1/3 meh. Certainly, the hijacking is compelling and the two Germans are fascinating in their naive radicalism. They are over their heads as they slowly drown in the pool of their own making. Even a minor character like Idi Amin is terrific. The second great thread is the Israeli political leaders. Eddie Marsan is a great actor in a juicy role. The least compelling is the Israeli soldier and his dancer girlfriend Sarah. While her concern is still life and death, it pales in comparison to the other threads. The modern dance show is a disruption in the story flow especially in the climatic action third act. Cutting back and forth between the airport and the modern dance is simply a failed attempt at an artistic flourish. Doing the airport straight would be more intense and more compelling. Also, Netanyahu should probably be the leading soldier character in the movie rather than the kid with his girlfriend. Overall, I really like the 2/3 and the 1/3 doesn't sink it.

Most of us (including me), when we heard about the new film 7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE, thought to themselves "didn't they just make this film a few years ago...?" The answer is yes. A similar film to this - RAID ON ENTEBBE - was a TV movie made a few years ago - 42 years ago, to be precise. It starred Peter Finch, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden and good ol' Charles Bronson. Made a mere few months after the true events, this slapped together movie was an old-fashioned "shoot 'em up."

This film is most definitely not.

7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE tells the true story of the 1976 Air France Hijacking of (mostly) Israeli citizens that settle in Entebbe, Uganda (under the leadership of crazed dictator Idi Amin) - refusing to negotiate with terrorists, the Israeli government plan, stage and execute a daring rescue mission.

Sounds like a pretty good plot for a Charles Bronson shoot-em-up.

In this version, Director Jose Padilha (the 2014 remake of ROBOCOP) decides to focus most of his attention not on the hijacked Israeli citizens, but rather, a pair of German hijackers juxtaposed against the political infighting in Israel between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres. The Israeli governmental infighting was interesting to watch with intriguing characters and cat-and-mouse back-stabbing politics while the plight of the kidnappers was underwritten and underwhelming. Consequently, this film was "just okay".

Oh...and it had about an hour-fifteen minutes of content stretched over an hour-forty-five minutes, so to stretch things out, Padilha decided to cut back and forth between the action (what there was of it) and a modern dance recital. Clearly he was trying a metaphor of the dance punctuating the emotions and actions elsewhere. It just didn't work for me.

Neither did this film. Skip this one and check out the Charles Bronson shoot-em-up.

Letter Grade C

5 (out of 10) stars and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)

The ending was annoying mostly because of the frequent crosscutting between the dancing sequences and the action taking place. I don't know what it was supposed to mean, but it was just irritating. And there was a subplot with one of the Israeli soldier and his girlfriend, that didn't add anything to the story, why it was included is a mystery to me. the storyline was good but the slow pace didn't help it.

On the contrary, 7 days in entembbe was well-acted, and the cinematography was awesome. the score was amazing but can be overbearing at times.

Really intrigued by this rescue and also read books related to this hijacking. But the dance really created nonsense metaphor drama. Sorry but very pretentious. Anytime the dance comes on I just check my phone or use restroom except the last scene.

A completely good film ruined by intermixing a pathetic dance routine (and the music) into the main assault. What was the director thinking.

Written by Gregory Burke, and directed by José Padilha, Entebbe has met with near universally bad reviews (22% approval on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing), and while it is without doubt flawed, it's not nearly as bad as has been made out. Telling the story of the 1976 AirFrance hijacking by Palestinian and German revolutionaries, and subsequent Israeli Defence Force rescue mission (Operation Thunderbolt), the film is presented from multiple points of view; Revolutionäre Zellen members Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl), Israeli Minister for Defence Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan), Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi), IDF Pvt. Zeev Hirsch (Ben Schnetzer), AirFrance 1st Engineer Jacques Le Moine (Denis Ménochet), IDF Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu (Angel Bonanni), and Ugandan President Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie).

The problem is obvious; the film covers every point of view except the most important one; the Palestinian. Indeed, the only Palestinian given any kind of development is a fictional character played by Omar Berdouni, who talks of Israeli tanks driving over a car in which his family were trapped. And there are other strange omissions; the death of Dora Bloch (Trudy Weiss), murdered on Amin's orders after she was released in Kampala, is never mentioned, and Wadie Haddad is nowhere to be found. Additionally, the film doesn't have much of contemporaneous relevance to say in relation to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, other than alluding melancholically to the self-propagating nature of the violence, and the unlikelihood of peace (the closing legend points out that after he pushed for negotiations in 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist). However, it's aesthetically very well put together, and the juxtaposition of Thunderbolt with a Jewish dance number works much better than it has any right to. True, it doesn't get to the heart of the matter by any stretch of the imagination, and it could be accused of taking a pro-Israeli stance, but it's enjoyable enough, and worth a look.

It's not easy to follow this story because it's intercut with ever more interpretive dance scenes. The final actions scene must have been one of the worst cut and most pretentious action I've ever seen. There have been many movies imitating The Godfather's intercutting of violence with other rituals of society, but this movie takes the care. I've rarely seen anything this ridiculous.

Living in the US, it's rare to see a movie present both sides of a conflict, especially regarding the Israel and Palestine conflict. Right from the start, this movie takes a position as the neutral observer...are these 'Freedom Fighters' or 'Terrorists'? (probably depends on where you live) I came her fully expecting to see 1 star reviews upvoted to the top of the page by fake accounts. And that's what I found, unfortunately.

If hearing/watching both sides of a story bothers you, then you are, in fact, a propagandist. You're trying to control the narrative and you don't care about what actually happened, or why it happened.

Please, take a break from your flag waving. It's okay to listen to both sides. It's okay for other people to hear both sides. It's okay to acknowledge mistakes made by both sides. This is how we learn.

All that said, it was a bit slow lol. But I applaud the neutral viewpoint and hope to see many more movies like this.

I've seen the doco's and original film and indeed was a young 20 year old when this event took place. I must say I'm surprised at so many negative comments. I found this film very human. The hostages were ordinary people in an extraordinary event. The Israeli soldiers, terrorists, Ugandan soldiers were ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences come together for all different reasons. I do not believe that the film sympathised with the terrorist as some here have said. But I do believe some elements of this film compared to our current times should be a warning against dispassion. I enjoyed this version of the historical event. I enjoyed the mix of idealism, duty and revenge displayed through and resultant from ideology. I also enjoyed the background of the modern theatre even though I'm sure I did not understand all of its nuances. To me it showed the continuance of the normality of life during an event of life changing proportion.

I think I saw the trailer for this once in recent months so it definitely wasn't on my radar at all. Had some time to kill today, so guess what? Was hoping for a solid thriller based on a real life event. Sadly, the film fails to tell a rather interesting story with the spark it probably deserves. I can see why this film sort of just snuck into theaters without a lot of promotion. Its just not very good, and is a forgettable film about an event that could have been adapted better.

The film follows the real life events of two German terrorists (Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann) who along with a group of Palestinian terrorists, hijack an airplane in 1976 in Entebbe, Uganda. Their hopes are to receive a ransom of 5 million for the passengers on board and the freedom of Palestinian soldiers captured in Israel. The film follows negotiation efforts and the ultimate retrieval of the hostages by the Israeli operative forces.

I'm not very familiar with a lot of Jose Padilha's work but his Robocop remake was a definite misfire. Even here we have an interesting event and two very talented co-leads but a story that is just so dull and boring. While the film is shot well, the merits of the writing fall very short. Its hard to care for what goes on when the film doesn't really attempt to entice you with any thrill, action, or moments to make it memorable.

The relevance of the film and incident is that it mirrors the hostility between Israel and Palestine today, a conflict that has stretched for decades. Other than that, Entebbe has good intentions but fails. It doesn't exactly have a voice or make a statement but just recreates the event in a half hearted way. The best part was that weird dance sequence performance that kept going on during the film.

5.5/10

The climactic of the incredible raid on Entebbe was hijacked by the inclusion of a dance routine (while perhaps interesting in a dance festival) that took the air out of what could have been an exciting film. The actual raid was a mishmash of random shooting, dancing, more shooting, more dancing.. The acting was satisfactory, especially the always impressive Eddie Marsan playing Shimon Peres. I could have been much better and would have been without the dance nonsense.

Before I watched this I read a lot of reviews both the 1/10s and the 10/10s to see what I would make of it when I had finished watching.

In my opinion it is definitely not a 1/10 movie, but it is also not a 10/10 movie, there are a lot of things that could have been improved, but it did a reasonable job of retelling a rather well know chapter in our history. I have seen the original a few times and this stands up well against it for me.

Nothing came across biased against the Israelis, in fact they were shown in a far better light than they perhaps deserve. If anything I thought the movie biased against the terrorists, even though they were shown from a much more personal view then the original movie.

For me it really showed how much innocent people are used as pawns at the behest of political leaders of all persuasions.

Rosamund Pike and Daniel Brühl did a very good job in thier roles, as I expected them to do, they are top notch actors. Eddie Marsan was also excellent as Shimon Peres. The supporting cast were mostly excellent as well.

The fact that the raid also took out most of the Ugandan Air Force on the ground was never mentioned. And in the final credits and 'what then happened' there was no mention of the fact that the Air France captain was awarded the Legion d'honneur , and the rest of crew received gallantry medals for staying with their passengers throughout, was not mentioned. That will not go down well in France. The dance routine 'overlay' of the actual raid is both ridiculous and overdone. The political slanting of the whole has been well covered by others.

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....

'Entebbe' is a film that should have worked and should have been good. It had a very talented cast, it is hard not to go wrong with Daniel Bruhl, Rosamund Pike and Eddie Marsan judging from a lot of their previous work. It also is based on and tells of a remarkable and hard-hitting true story.

While not a terrible film, despite sharing all of many people's complaints of 'Entebbe' it is not as quite as bad to me as some have made out because there are a few plus points, 'Entebbe' should have been much better and that it screwed up in such an underwhelming manner is frustrating. It really does not do this incredible story justice and the cast are all better than this and deserved better. Didn't come out feeling insulted or offended watching 'Entebbe', at the same time the film left me disappointed and frustrated.

There are plus points here. Daniel Bruhl and Rosamund Pike actually fare very well in the lead roles. While Bruhl's as expected thoughtful, gravitas-filled and charismatic performance keeps one glued Pike impressed me more in the more challenging role (including having a German accent, not an easy one to master and one stereotyped very variably a lot, and having apparently to learn German, thought though she was fluent in the language already) and the one that the film tries most to develop.

'Entebbe' starts off intriguingly and there are parts where the production values have slickness and atmosphere. There is one scene that did have emotional impact and did leave me haunted, that was Pike's phone scene.

However, the rest of the cast don't fare so well and it is largely down to the way the characters are written. Eddie Marsan is just bizarre and how Peres is written and characterised felt wrong and out of kilter. Nonso Anozie is nowhere near sinister enough as Amin, the man was a monster and Anozie completely fails to bring that on screen. Ben Schnetzer's role doesn't make sense and felt under-developed. The chemistry between the actors is very disconnected, on the most part this is including between Bruhl and Pike through no fault of their own.

It's not the cast that are to blame here. The one-sided and biased way the roles are written, including trying to humanise the lead characters, making Peres' and Amin's roles one-dimensional and painting the Palestinians in an objectionable light, is more of a problem. Even when trying to tell the events from multiple, even all, view-points which fails to tell one very much and quickly became over-stuffed.

As is the less than taut and rather preachy script, that runs out of steam far too quickly and it constantly feels we are running in circles with nothing new being told and being told the obvious and the same thing more than once. The direction is both pedestrian and gimmicky, often muddled and like not-knowing-what-to-do-with-the-material standard, and too often the production values are drab and dizzying, the slow motion in the final raid was not necessary, trivialised the already too downplayed violence and made me feel uncomfortable. The scene should have been tense but was anything but, feeling too much like an afterthought.

Much has also been made of the use and cross-cutting of modern dancing. This was overused, out of place, gimmicky and not even that well choreographed. It really diluted what little tension there already was and it made it very hard to take the film seriously. Found it very annoying and even disrespectful that 'Entebbe' had this suspense-filled and riveting story and make it dull and devoid of tension and suspense, with what should have been the most prominent and compelling events (the planning of the raid and the raid itself especially) being given short shrift and treated in a far too safe manner. What was more prominent and significantly less interesting was handled turgidly and in a biased fashion. It felt like there was little at stake when there was actually a huge amount.

Overall, a disappointing film that has pluses but also a lot of minuses. The cast and the story deserved better. 4/10 Bethany Cox

I gotta say, i cant give any credence to these 1/10 reviews that say this movie is biased against israel or that it sympathises with the terrorists. I thought israel and it's officials/soldiers were depicted in as fair a light as anyone can ask for. As for (some) of the terrorists, yes the movie shows their human side, but rightly so. It seems some of these guys didnt want things to escalate the way they did. And its only fair to show that in the movie. All in all i felt like things were shown in a decently objective way. Not too crazy about the interpretive dancing bits tho.

José Padilha introduced interpretative dance to the film, which kinda worked... I think, I had to give it an extra point for the novel idea.... but the jury's still out for me for this one, not sure I'd watch it again!

Sympathizes with terrorists. Also the director thought he would be creative and mix in a dance scene with the turning point of the film but it ruined the movie.

Well made, and well directed, maybe the pace is a little slow but a very watchable movie.

I am reading many negative reviews. It seems people want the hijackers to be uni-dimensional zealots. Any effort to humanize them or give their back story is repulsive to most. I disagree with most of these views. The movie is thoughtful, gives different viewpoints, and is well executed. The interspersing of the dance sequence added emotion and tension to a compelling story. Those who don't appreciate the art in a picture should watch the shoot emotion up 1970's version.