By Emilio Frenk.
Director: José Padilha
Cast: Daniel Brühl, Rosamund Pike, Lior Ashkenazi, Mark Ivanir, Denis Ménochet, Eddie Marsan, Ben Schnetzer, Juan Pablo Raba, Peter Sullivan, Andrea Deck, Brontis Jodorowsky, Nonso Anozie and Michael Lewis.
Rating: Average.
Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha, brings “7 Days in Entebbe”, a film with an interesting theme that could have had a better execution.
Based on true events, the movie takes place in 1976 and centers in Wilfried Böse (Daniel Brühl) and Briggite Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) two German terrorists who join forces with Palestinian terrorists who hijack the flight 139 Air France on route from Tel-Aviv, Israel to Paris.
In the time they hold the passengers and crew hostage in Entebbe Uganda where they will demand a huge ransom and the release of 53 Palestinian and Pro-Palestinian Prisoners.
The Israeli Government now will have a dilemma on either comply the demands of the terrorists or attempt a daring rescue that could cost the lives of both the civilians and crew.
The reason why I mentioned before that “7 Days in Entebbe” could have had a better execution comes in the screenplay written by Gregory Burke.
I feel that the opening scene of the film should have gone straight to the main characters of the film, which in this case are the terrorists instead of something else that happened. Also the film has two many flashbacks. I understand for this movie you need them but I feel that with one should have been enough.
The love story between the character of Rosamund Pike and Juan Pablo Raba doesn´t work since that is not the premise of the story and I feel that parts of the film were focused on that.
José Padilha´s direction felt I little bit sloppy and I feel that there could have things that he could have done better visually speaking. I feel that for moments the cinematography was not that good and the choices in terms of shots didn´t had any meaning for me.
On the other hand the movie has very good things like the performances of Daniel Brühl and Rosamund Pike who are both fantastic despite of the film that had a sloppy screenplay.
The editing of the film had an interesting pace but the problem was the beginning of the film, that was with a performance on stage that didn´t make any sense at all.
Again the film should have started with your main characters and it could have been written better since the movie had a lot of potential.
I didn´t know anything about the them of this film and honestly I found it very interesting since it involves a hijack and the length of the film was very good.
In this kind of films there is always the thing that it´s either too long or slow and here it had the ideal pace which made it work.
I slightly enjoyed “7 Days in Entebbe” and it had very good moments but the execution of it was handled poorly due to the screenplay that it was involved.