7 Days in Entebbe (2018)

Sadly Over-hyped

Purely Joyful Movie!

Good idea lost in the noise

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Glad I didn't take a lot of the negative reviews about the dancing too seriously. Agreed, it's a bit unorthodox - But it serves to break and accentuate the narrative! I think it was a good touch to a great film! Must watch!

First, it's boring. The hijacking happens in the first five or so minutes of the movie, and the rescue happens in the last twenty. In the eighty or so minutes in between, very little happens. One hostage gets beat up, but that's mostly off camera, and there's about two minutes of interesting banter between the lead hijacker and the flight engineer, but that's it. I can't even count how many times I checked the time just to see how far we were from the climax.Second, the character development of the hostages is almost non-existent. Let's see...you have the guy who gets beat up because the hijackers think he's a spy. You have a guy who rips off a Star of David necklace and pockets it at the outset. You have an old woman who gets confused about where she is and starts freaking out. You have a couple who get outraged when Idi Amin threatens their children. You have a pilot who orders his crew to stay until all hostages are released, and the flight stewardess who cries because of it. You have a flight engineer who thinks engineers are more important than revolutionaries. You have a woman who lies about being pregnant to be released early, and takes with her a tiny amount of intelligence about the situation. You have a nun who didn't want to leave the hostages but was forced to any way. I literally described ALL character development of the hostages right there. If any of these situations sound interesting, are they ever followed up on? For instance, did the hijackers freak out when they found the necklace in that guy's pocket? Was there a suspenseful scene where Amin was about to follow through on his threats against those children but they were saved in the nick of time? Nope, and nope. The most follow up that we get is that the flight engineer makes a face at the lead hijacker as he's about to massacre them, causing a moment of hesitation, which allows the IDF baddies to storm in and stop it. I'm not joking or exaggerating.Third, while the rescue was successful on the whole, is there any attention paid to the innocents who perished? Nope. Jean-Jacques Mimouni stood up during the raid and was killed by IDF who thought he was a hijacker, but was that shown? Nope. Dora Bloch went to the hospital and was left behind when the rescue occurred, so Amin had her murdered. Was this shown? Nope. These two, and two others get no more than a caption at the end saying they died- nothing about how. They do show the death of Yoni Netanyahu, but it's really glossed over. And instead of developing him as a character, and showing how he balanced his work and love life in his final days, they focus on some fictional IDF dude and his dancing girlfriend (not going to mention the stupid overlay of a dance sesh during the climactic scene). I actually thought that fictional dude was Yoni until close to the end of the film.Fourth, decades ago, people were warning that Amin got off easy because western media portrayed him as an oafish buffoon and a clown, instead of as the dangerous, murderous lunatic that he was. He fed people to crocodiles, ate several himself, invaded his neighboring countries, and exiled entire groups of people based on dreams, but in this movie, he smilingly explains to his guests all of his titles and how awesome he is. He also comforts a nun as he forces her onto a bus to leave Entebbe. He says some children will be killed, but that's as evil as his portrayal gets.Fifth, people are correct to say this film is pro-Palestinian because much of the bland fluff between the opening and the climax consists of the ethical dilemmas of the hijackers, particularly the two Germans. How does it look for Germans to possibly kill Jews? This is mentioned time and time again. Kuhlmann, the female German, is upset that her idol died in a German jail, and she struggles with this throughout the movie. Whatever. Honestly, even the Palestinians are mostly just faceless baddies. Take whatever viewpoint on that conflict that you want, but this doesn't make an interesting or watchable film.I'm done now. This is about all I can take of talking about this stupid movie.

A historical film and incredible actions. I found it well told, but it did not have the glamor, I think it lacked enchantment. Our great director making a movie against your style. In that being, I think it is a given step, we must have other productions. But we had this record of dreamy actions by young people who went down the wrong path. This movie brings great reflections.The filmmaker is the brilliant Brazilian José Padilha, who is working in the mega cinema, in the country Hollywood, this director innovated and agitated our cinema with his current films and police genre, he made the great Elite Troop 1 and 2 (2006 and 2019), also did in Hollywood, which I liked too last Roboccop (2014) and the current story that shook our country, Federal Police, The Law Is For All (2017), which became a series of Netfilx, called Mechanism ( 2018), great too, let's wait for the new sequences of it. As protagonists we have the great Rosamund Pike the English actress, who has done among other Exemplary Girl (2014) and Pride & Prejudice (2005) and also has an actor who I really like the Spanish Daniel Brühl who made among other Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Goodbye, Lenin! (2003).

This movie is the basic hostage rescue sort of movie (someone's captured, authorities make a plan, authorities execute the plan) but it does not play out that efficiently or good. Now, of course this is based off of real events, but for the sake of making a movie things must be altered and trimmed to be made interesting and cinematic-however, this movie seems too interested in showing the least intriguing parts. It's slow and it definitely FEELS slow despite not that long a runtime. Honestly this movie could've cut out a solid half hour of content. The acting is fine and the movie even looks very nice from a technical perspective, but the pacing is so off. Not to mention the most perplexing and unnecessary inclusion of dance scenes-this aspect really frustrated me after the second time, but why would you ruin the whole rescue op with it, after building it up for the whole movie? It didn't even feel pretentious, it just felt like the editor accidentally spliced dance footage into the film. This one's a real mixed bag. Don't go in expecting a cool climax. It's not much of a thriller because it drudges on with superficial politics and it's not much of a drama because there's no emotional investment. Disappointing.