7 Days in Entebbe feels like … well … seven days in Entebbe. Don’t waste your time.
7 Days in Entebbe (Daniel Bruhl, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan) – Why in the world would a studio “green light” another movie about the 1976 raid on Entebbe Airport in Uganda where Palestinian and German terrorists took the plane they hijacked? And if you were going to do it, wouldn’t you want some A-list stars telling the story with new revelations?
7 Days in Entebbe tells the story mostly through the eyes of the two German hijackers, Wilfried Bose (Daniel Bruhl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike). They are revolutionaries who believe in the Palestinian cause. Almost immediately after the plane lands in Entebbe, Bose is bothered by the way his compatriots treat the hostages, isolates the Jews, and embrace Idi Amin the Ugandan strongman. Kuhlman is colder and more calculating. For her, this is about change, publicity, and making a statement.
The daring raid by the Israelis managed to free all but four of the hostages with only one military casualty. The clandestine operation conducted without the knowledge or acquiescence of Amin served as a shining example of the bravery of the Israeli soldiers and the resolve of Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his cabinet.
What seems clear in an underlying pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bent of the film. It isn’t that RoboCop director Jose Padilha or writer Gregory Burke absolves the kidnappers, but they go out of their way to call Israelis fascists (really?) and thieves of the land that previously was part of Palestine. No matter how one views the age-old Middle East conflict, making such political statements in the context of a 1976 hijacking, kidnapping, and racially motivated extortion is more than a stretch.
From a cinematic point of view, 7 Days in Entebbe spends too much time between the hijacking and the raid. The re-telling of the hijacking and the raid itself are handled deftly but the script bogs down while the pacing is uneven. By the seventh day – the day of the raid – the ending was anti-climatic. The movie covers no new ground.
Destined to be a box office flop, 7 Days in Entebbe is just a poor remake of the star-studded TV movie Raid on Entebbe (starring Peter Finch, Charles Bronson, Yaphet Kotto, Martin Balsam, and Jack Warden) without the big stars but with a political motive. Pass.