HOSTAGES IN ENTEBBE, an immersion fascinating in Hell the ideological – Critical

After trying the film nerve and to have transferred successfully to the call of the small screen, José Padilha, is engaged here in an exercise of style as promising as staff. Between historical reconstruction and thriller ideological, his hostage polyphonic captive in spite of the sequences to the intensity of a sawtooth.

In 1976, following the hijacking of a plane, 246 passengers are sequestered for seven days in Uganda. Several directors had already looked into the event before the Brazilian, including Irvin Kershner with Raid on Entebbe or the israeli Menahem Golan with Operation Thunderbolt , for example, the second very interesting thing to do. But this new feature-length film thanks to its modern processing imposes itself almost automatically as the new reference work on this episode, able to strangely echo the realities still present. It is written with a Nocturama of Bertand Bonello – albeit with less skill – in a vein that arises on the issue of terrorism a look more reflective, or even organic. In their respective “terrorists humanitarian” drown in their ideals, which are sometimes more placebos unclean to a need for revolt as convictions.

The ideas are bubbling, and in the director, as in his characters, everything vibrates with urgency. The director made the choice of multiple viewpoints : that of the terrorists, the germans, the israelis, the prime minister, his advisors, that of a soldier, his girlfriend, one of the foreign media… And this wealth of vital is superbly served by some of the editing effects of a know-how some. These give the whole a fluidity appreciable, reports insinuated themselves between the different branches of the plot. The two terrorists standing in the face of the fate of a hostage, not knowing if they should kill him or not disappear immediately for the benefit of the two leaders facing the same decision, this time concerning dozens of lives. A messenger comes out of the meeting room, transition direct with a lessee of a hostage who enters a room, he fell asleep later, while the minister wakes up. All of these links and highlight their character as a victim at all in these troubled times, the dancer sees her lover escape, the soldier was condemned to imprisonment, the officer precipitates a dark future.In this heat where freedom is claimed as a banner so that it is utopian, many of the plans against the day distill the mystery of these figures, which are only a shadow of what they defend. The faces are amazing humanity, Rosamund Pike in this role develops an anger that she wears beautifully. In regards to Daniel Brühl, he burst onto the screen. None of the seconds where he appears not to pass unnoticed, emanates from each micromouvement of his face the magnitude of the moral dilemmas and the idealism vain that he embodies. These weight torture viscerally his character more ambiguous than the other if resolved, he who fights against any form of fascism appears in the eyes of all as a nazi, reiterating the violence against the jewish people. Everything is hijacked but mostly rotten to the core, each mastermind seeks to take advantage of the situation and pushes, therefore, always a little further the possibility of peace. This notion is vested in the mouth of each, if you can’t negotiate, how long will we be at war ? And for good reason…The final confrontation. Some consider the interleaving of the assault with the contemporary choreography, such as defusing the violence, yet the power of representation coupled with the music extraordinary precisely make it possible to overcome the banality. Especially since this choice is that in the logical continuity of the film who chooses widely hypotyposis when the worst happens, in order to superimpose the least possible physical violence practical to the psychological already pretty stifling. And if the slow-motion surprises, it is solely devoted to a character whose life takes a turn for the drastic, this moment where everything shifts for him is, therefore, exposed longer than for the other. The ending is the culmination of the distortion, the race to peace is vain, and relegated to the background, when on the front of the stage everything is informal as the Hostages of Fautrier.

Despite all of its qualities and the emotion conveyed, it is sometimes the trappings of an action film pretty average, not manager, not always with equal intelligence, the moments of tension and yielding to a realization a little more flat. On the one hand, the countdown timer is set to seven days (the original title ” 7 days in Entebbe “) and while the wait is in the beginning very effective as the days follow one another, the closer you are to the attack and less the build-up had its effect. The segments within the government, served by a trio of players, however gifted, they lose their bite as they mingle with military training.

While the stakes are exposed to singularly at the beginning, by deviating from the “humanitarian” everything takes the aspect of a political game strategic without true relief. More paradoxically, of all these voices that we hear, one of the hostages is almost completely kills it. It is expressed that rapidly and most of the time in confrontation with the executioners, they have almost no existence of their own on the screen if it is not the character of Denis Ménochet. Of course it is for them that we tremble, but their release could have had an impact tenfold if it was more focused on their table card games improvised rather than negotiations.

But in the end, if the entire lack of hard-line position, the film really stand out works strained thanks to its uniqueness wise, but sublime.

Manon

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