Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl, Eddie Marsan, Kamil Lemieszewski, Ben Schnetzer, Nonso Anozie, Mark Ivanir, Juan Pablo Raba, Denis Ménochet, Andrea Deck, Brontis Jodorowsky, Lior Ashkenazi, Peter Sullivan, Angel Bonanni, Natalie Stone, Vincent Riotta, Laurel Lefkow, Yiftach Klein, Flynn Allen, Gabriel Constantin, Uriel Emil, Laurence Bouvard.
The trouble with history is that it is only in retrospect do you begin to understand how the series of connections fell into place, that the burden we carry for finding that one moment which defines the whole historical fact in an nutshell and the cry of desperation when we find it would be easier to wipe everything away, dismiss all that went before and start again, to wipe away all the accounts and narration away, over and over again.
It is in that search for history though that we express ourselves as a species, that our ability to look back and see the lines and strands of causality and effect and attempt to make sense of them; like a giant detective photofit, we put them together painstakingly, sometimes in the wrong order, often without the evidence matching every possible report, in the end we can but hope for the right series of events to come clear and the vision before us to explain all that transpired.
The trouble with history is that is impossible to be accurate with humanity’s secular view and each person’s agenda taking precedence, no more so when you engage with politics and the thought of what is exactly the nature and face of terrorism. It is a view point that Entebbe does its very best to show and understand, that the view on all sides is often skewed in the favour of those that stayed alive, those that lived and those to whom history has been kind.
Like the other films that have discussed the events of the hijacking of an Air France airplane in 1976 by Wilfried Böse, Brigitte Kuhlmann, and the men at their side, Entebbe deals with many facts, but adds the conflict surrounding the thinking of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the almost Faustian whispering of Shimon Peres in his Prime Minister’s ear and pulls no punches when it comes to the fatalism and in some ways, the humanity of Wilfried Böse as he is also torn between achieving his radical dream and proving to the world that he is not a Nazi.
It is in the performances of Daniel Brühl as the aforementioned Wilfried Böse, Lior Ashkenazi as Prime Minister Rabin and the ever reliable and consistent cinematic thought of Eddie Marsan as Shimon Peres that brings the film together, that makes it as steadfast as it is and a near trustworthy account of the situation that unfolded in Entebbe, Uganda.
A respectable film, Entebbe does reach in and get into the mind of the major players in this drama, one though that might draw unsavoury criticism due to today’s political climate. History may be written by the winners, but in today’s world, history is re-written by those with the biggest axe to grind.
Ian D. Hall