Also saw the movie 7 Days in Entebbe which is about a terrorist hijacking of an Air France flight in 1976. Based on a true story, it follows a German/Palestinian hijacked plane that is rerouted to Entebba, Uganda. The passengers and crew are held hostage in an abandoned terminal while the Israeli state tries to figure out how to rescue the 80+ jewish passengers (and everyone else too).
This is a pretty curious movie that’s getting very bad reviews. I think its better than the critical consensus… by a little bit. Not a great deal. The movie does manage to drag at points and should be a lot more suspenseful given the plot.
But what I liked about the film is that it tries to give you all sides of the situation. The German hijackers – a couple played by Rosaumnd Pike and Daniel Bruhl – are involved in the hijacking because they sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians… but they realize too late maybe the image of a pair of Germans kidnapping jews is not the best image for their would-be revolution. Plus the Palestinian hijackers clearly have it in for the Israelis… but they are also given room to explain their motivations. We get scenes of the Israeli government trying to figure things out too… plus a soldier who will be sent in on the rescue and his girlfriend. Oh, and Idi Amin makes an extended cameo… guess it’s his country, he can grandstand if he wants.
There’s honestly probably too much going on in the movie that gets in the way of the film’s pacing. Trimming some of that might have made it move a lot better.
That said, there’s an utterly bizarre interpretive dance being done by an Israeli theater group that cuts in and out of the movie at random times. It’s kind of inexplicable and I’m kind of at a loss as to what it “means”… it’s actually a pretty cool number and routine but it is intercut with the hostage rescue and I’m sure it’s meant to be super profound… I just don’t think it works. Except, yeah, cool number.
If nothing else, it made the movie memorable.
So, yeah, this is kind of a failure of a movie but an interesting failure. It’s not a BAD movie though. I really respect its desire to tell a story and give the characters – including the terrorists – time to breath and justify their actions instead of just being about Bad Guys doing Bad Guy Things. Maybe that sounds like its bad taste – they are terrorists – but everyone is the hero of their own story and this movie gets that.
Score: 74