‘7 Days in Entebbe’ has an interesting story to tell, but gets quite distracted

Posted on March 23, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

In July 1976, a combination of Palestinian terrorists and Germany revolutionaries hijacked an Air France flight mid-air on its way from Tel-Aviv, Israel, to Paris, France, with more than 200 people on board. They diverted the flight to Entebbe in Uganda, which at the time was under the rule of the dictator Idi Amin. Back in Israel, government officials were forced to decide between breaking their long-standing policy of not negotiating with terrorists or using force to get their citizens home.

I was very loosely familiar with these events when I first heard about the new film, “7 Days in Entebbe,” directed by José Padilha (“RoboCop”) and starring Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”), Daniel Brühl (“Captain America: Civil War”) and Eddie Marsan (“Sherlock Holmes”). For the most part, the film delivers a tension-filled two hours as it jumps between the hostages and their captors, the Israeli government officials and one of the soldiers who will ultimately be sent to Uganda as part of the rescue mission.

While the first two parts work quite well, the third supplies the film’s inexplicable obsession with a dance production involving the soldier’s girlfriend. I’m sure there is some implied connection between the abstract dance performance and the other events on screen, but I have no idea what it is. The filmmakers go so far as to intercut the eventual raid on the airport terminal with the dance performance. And just in case that wasn’t enough, there is a second, unrelated performance played at the end as the credits roll. I simply don’t get it!

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