erman revolutionaries Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and Wilfried Böse (Daniel Bruhl) join a small group from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to execute an unprecedented hijacking of an Air France flight. With the aid of Ugandan President Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie), the self-proclaimed freedom fighters successfully take over Flight 139 and redirect the Paris-bound airplane to land at a derelict airport in Entebbe. As the more than 200 hostages await their fate and the world watches in suspense, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) must decide whether or not to break policy to negotiate with the terrorists. When the Germans’ compatriots at Entebbe start segregating the Israeli prisoners and threatening to kill children first – should the government refuse to comply with their demands – both Böse and Kuhlmann begin to have doubts about their mission. With time quickly running out, Rabin, Defense Minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan), and Chief of Staff Motta Gur (Mark Ivanir) concoct a daring rescue operation to storm the airport stronghold.

For some absolutely inexplicable reason, a movie about warring governments, political extremists, and covert military operations is bookended by interpretive dance sequences (though the music selections are fitting). These moments might loosely translate to some sort of commentary on Middle Eastern unrest, or decades of persecution, or even the freedom to do something artistic while others sacrifice themselves for those liberties. But mostly they’re simply intrusive; when the finale opts for juxtaposing a dance performance with a deadly raid on Entebbe, audiences will wish the intention for creativity was abandoned for the sake of dependable thrills.

The story is based on true events, though there’s a certain amount of dramatization necessary to translate it to the big screen. That quantity is actually enough to provoke the filmmakers into printing such a disclaimer onto the frame, hoping that viewers will forgive any embellishments if they go in with the knowledge of factual manipulation. Nevertheless, the editing continues to push for a sense of verity, scrawling dates, times, locations, and the ticking down of the seven-day ordeal. Despite a remarkable rapidity in the hijacking itself, there’s a bit of cheating with the narrative, as it continually reverts back to six months earlier, when different stages of planning took place in other countries. This negates the speed with which the film dives into the hostage-taking, dragging out what is already a plot that inherently suffers from pacing problems.

Seven days is, tragically, too long for a properly suspenseful thriller. History can’t be blamed, however. But the structuring and editing of this project can be easily faulted. Even when negotiations break down and the various allegiances of the instigators cause infighting, the picture moves at a mystifying pace. Why is a historical hijacking and rescue mission, involving such striking players as Idi Amin, Yoni Netanyahu, and Yitzhak Rabin, such a fizzling experience? The general politics throughout manage to be more exciting than the military strike at the climax; it’s a better history lesson than it is a tense drama or action film.

The biggest pitfalls are surely the characters and their positioning within the story. The main protagonists are the German terrorists (or freedom fighters, since they’re given opportunities for understanding and sympathy; “It’s better to show mercy, comrade”), who are the only real stars, leaving the assorted hostages to seem as thumb-twiddlers; the politicians to appear as scheming scumbags; and the special forces soldiers to look like afterthoughts, barely given names or duties or purposes. It’s as if “7 Days in Entebbe” is devoid of all heroes. And viewers can’t even revel in the villainy of the pseudo-villains, since they’re confused and conflicted and weak. While the Entebbe event was a significant juncture in the Israeli-Palestinian hostilities (for which there are still no solutions, over 40 years later), this lackluster reenactment is sure to inspire little interest in such a persistent, complex struggle that continues to make headlines today.

– The Massie Twins