7 Days in Entebbe
It was the boldest commando strike in history. The 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe surpasses anything before or since, not only for difficulty in reaching the target but because of its objective. Unlike, say, the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, the primary aim wasn’t to kill but to rescue—to bring back a hundred hostages alive.
The story has been told before on screen three times before the release of the latest version, 7 Days in Entebbe. The earlier iterations were produced within a few years of the event and focused on the daring-do of Israeli special forces. Brazilian director José Padilha and writer Gregory Burke are less interested in the rescue’s military precision than the mindset of the terrorists who hijacked an airliner and forced it to the ostensibly safe haven of Uganda. They also explore the politics behind Israel’s decision to strike a thousand miles beyond the normal reach of its military.
The international geopolitics is sketched out neatly enough. A militant Palestinian group and a pair of far-left Germans carried out the hijacking. They were part of an international network, abetted but not controlled by the Soviet Bloc, determined to bring down the world order regardless of who died when the system collapsed. The Palestinian cause is briefly stated: The militants lost their homeland and saw the death of family members because of Israel. The Germans, Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike), hated the world as it was and sought to destroy it in favor of a Marxist utopia. “I only fear a life without meaning,” Kuhlmann declares. The Palestinian leader is a little wary of their bitter ideological rhetoric. “You are here because you hate your country,” he tells Böse. “I am here because I love mine.”
Queasy comic relief is provided by the accurate depiction of Uganda’s delusional dictator, Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie). With a broad smile he welcomes hostages as they exit the hijacked plane with the reassuring words, “I am appointed by God Almighty to be your savior.” Like the manager of a resort no one cares to visit, he adds, “We will take care of your every need.” In the ’70s Amin was an outlier. Back then, narcissism, unfiltered arrogance and mental instability were counted unusual among world leaders.
The main dynamic of the plot comes down to arguments between a good German, Böse, and a bad one, Kuhlmann. He talks tough but upon a moment’s reflection, doesn’t want to kill, and is afraid that segregating the Jewish hostages from the others makes them akin to the Nazis. Kuhlmann means business with the AK-47 she brandishes and responds to Böse’s objections with a dose of Marxist dialectic.
Brühl and Pike give Entebbe’s best performances, endowing their characters and their disagreements with a believable sense for the reality of those times. The Israeli team, led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and Defense Minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan), come across as bland in their opposing roles of dove (Rabin) and hawk (Peres). The film digresses unnecessarily into the lives of an Israeli commando and his modern dancer girlfriend, juxtaposing the Entebbe raid with her performance as if the two events are somehow compatible. It’s arty nonsense.
7 Days in Entebbe wants to make a timely statement about the value of negotiation over war. “Our enemies are our neighbors,” Rabin reminds his cabinet. “One day we must talk and make peace.” True, but Padilha and Burke seem to forget that the time was not right in 1976 with a planeload held by gunmen ready to kill.
