The saga of Air France Flight 139, a flight that began its journey in Tel Aviv, Israel and was bound for Paris when Palestinian-affiliated terrorists hijacked it and its passengers and sent it to Uganda, riveted the entire world during the early summer of 1976. The lightning raid that the Israel Defense Force conducted to free the plane and its passengers at Entebbe, under the nose of Uganda's infamous military dictator Idi Amin, on July 4th turned that saga into the stuff of legend. Many books had been written about the Entebbe operation (referred to in Israeli circles as "Operation Thunderbolt"); and it would become the basis for several movies, including the 1977 Israeli-made film OPERATION THUNDERBOLT, and, in 2018, 7 DAYS AT ENTEBBE. But the telling of the story to the masses began within mere months of its completion here in the U.S. via two made-for-TV movies. VICTORY AT ENTEBBE was the first of them. The second was RAID ON ENTEBBE.
Like VICTORY AT ENTEBBE, RAID ON ENTEBBE was not only made quite fast, and on a modest budget even for a made-for-TV endeavor, but done with a fairly sizeable cast of solid actors, and with a fair amount of fidelity to the events as most people knew them at that time (the film aired on January 9, 1977, just six months after the saga concluded). Peter Finch, who was to win a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for his famous "I'm mad as hell" role of Howard Beale in NETWORK, got a posthumous Emmy nomination (and rightly so) here for his portrayal of Israeli prime minister Itzhak Rabin, who had the ultimate responsibility to approve Operation Thunderbolt, while Charles Bronson portrays Dam Shomron, the IDF Brigadier General who commanded the raid. Horst Buchholz, who co-starred with Bronson in the 1960 Western mega-classic THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, ably portrays Wilfred Boese, one of the two Palestinian-aligned German terrorists who took over the Air France jet; and Yaphet Kotto makes a very imposing portrayal of the infamous (and murderous) Idi Amin, who gave the terrorists safe haven and the Israeli government a migraine headache that couldn't be solved any other way than with the raid. The all-star cast includes such stars as Martin Balsam, Jack Warden. John Saxon, Robert Loggia, Sylvia Sidney, Stephen Macht, James Woods, and Eddie Constantine.
The film's depiction of the goings-on in Israel and Uganda, while not much terribly different from VICTORY AT ENTEBBE, nevertheless also hew very closely to what we knew then about the whole saga. This is due to the concise screenplay by Barry Beckerman and the tension-filled direction of Irvin Kershner, who had directed films like 1967's THE FLIM-FLAM MAN and 1970's LOVING, and later directed 1978's THE EYES OF LAURA MARS and 1980's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The fine, done-on-the-fly music score is by David Shire, who had already done fine work on THE CONVERSATION, THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE-TWO-THREE, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. All of this results in a very solid made-for-TV movie of one of the most intense pre-9/11 terrorist events in history.
RAID ON ENTEBBE gets a high recommendation, and a '10' rating.
Like VICTORY AT ENTEBBE, RAID ON ENTEBBE was not only made quite fast, and on a modest budget even for a made-for-TV endeavor, but done with a fairly sizeable cast of solid actors, and with a fair amount of fidelity to the events as most people knew them at that time (the film aired on January 9, 1977, just six months after the saga concluded). Peter Finch, who was to win a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for his famous "I'm mad as hell" role of Howard Beale in NETWORK, got a posthumous Emmy nomination (and rightly so) here for his portrayal of Israeli prime minister Itzhak Rabin, who had the ultimate responsibility to approve Operation Thunderbolt, while Charles Bronson portrays Dam Shomron, the IDF Brigadier General who commanded the raid. Horst Buchholz, who co-starred with Bronson in the 1960 Western mega-classic THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, ably portrays Wilfred Boese, one of the two Palestinian-aligned German terrorists who took over the Air France jet; and Yaphet Kotto makes a very imposing portrayal of the infamous (and murderous) Idi Amin, who gave the terrorists safe haven and the Israeli government a migraine headache that couldn't be solved any other way than with the raid. The all-star cast includes such stars as Martin Balsam, Jack Warden. John Saxon, Robert Loggia, Sylvia Sidney, Stephen Macht, James Woods, and Eddie Constantine.
The film's depiction of the goings-on in Israel and Uganda, while not much terribly different from VICTORY AT ENTEBBE, nevertheless also hew very closely to what we knew then about the whole saga. This is due to the concise screenplay by Barry Beckerman and the tension-filled direction of Irvin Kershner, who had directed films like 1967's THE FLIM-FLAM MAN and 1970's LOVING, and later directed 1978's THE EYES OF LAURA MARS and 1980's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The fine, done-on-the-fly music score is by David Shire, who had already done fine work on THE CONVERSATION, THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE-TWO-THREE, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. All of this results in a very solid made-for-TV movie of one of the most intense pre-9/11 terrorist events in history.
RAID ON ENTEBBE gets a high recommendation, and a '10' rating.