New Entebbe Film Falls Flat

The new movie – “7 Days in Entebbe” — based on the legendary Israeli rescue mission of 1976 that saved passengers hijacked aboard an Air France Airbus A-300 from the Ugandan airport became a topic of debate when it became known that in a detour into revisionist history unwelcome in the Jewish state, the filmmakers created an alternative reading of the role played by Yonatan Netanyahu, a mission commander and the only soldier to be killed during the mission. Israelis disturbed by the affront to one of the nation’s most renowned heroes and celebrated events are no doubt delighted at the critical flat-line that followed its debut at the Berlin Film Festival. Noting its sense of “staleness,” Variety called the thriller “un-thrilling.” In the United Kingdom, The Guardian used words like “ponderous,” “ludicrous,” and “flat,” while in London, The Times opines that “all interest in the main narrative simply dies” while “the entire project is ultimately undone by a final act of near cataclysmic ineptitude.”