Like that damn Titanic movie. I was really hoping they’d make it to New York.
I don’t know, I’m just reporting on what the reviewer said.
This reminds me of other movies loosely based on real events that completely change the ending.
“The Delta Force” is based off the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 but completely changes the ending where in real life the US and Israel agreed to the terrorist demands in the movie Delta Force kills all the terrorists. The beginning of “S.W.A.T.” also begins with a bank robbery heavily based off the 1997 North Hollywood Shootout, but instead of the robbers attempting to get away and being gunned down outside the bank in the film the bank robbers are killed in the bank itself.
That’s consistent with the way they’re portrayed in the movie.
The main focus of the movie switches back and forth between the hijackers(with the main focus on the German hijackers over the PFLP ones) and the Israeli cabinet.
I expected quite a bit of focus on Jonathan Netanyahu but he really seems like an afterthought.
I won’t try to convince you to see it and I had some issues with it, but the review was a bit unfair.
The movie hardly portrays the PLO hijackers in a sympathetic light. Are the two German hijackers in charge of the hijacking humanized? Yes, and the movie certainly gives them plenty of time to justify what they’re doing though I don’t think audiences will come to sympathize with them too much since they’re more portrayed as bored, bourgeois intellectuals rebelling against their parents.
However, the PLO hijackers come across as thugs who view the Germans as soft and are convinced the Israelis won’t negotiate and seem quite eager to slaughter the hostages. They also repeatedly clash with the German hijackers regarding the treatment of the hostages. The closest either come to being portrayed as sympathetic is one lost their family to the IDF and clearly his grief has caused him to be consumed with rage.
Bored bourgeois intellectuals — who just happen to think that murdering 100 people is a lot of fun.
Yeah, I hope the audience won’t sympathize with them too much.
But the film’s director apparently wants them to. And that’s what pisses me off.
Maybe the next movie this director makes will be about bored intellectuals who decide to run a kiddie-porn and child molester racket.
I won’t be paying for any tickets to support him.
Spoiler: most of the hostages survived (in real life, anyway; you know how movies often take poetic license). Not that that makes the hijackers an all-around bunch of swell fellows you would want to hang out with sipping espressos and discussing Marxist revisionism, or the movie any good.
The director is Jose Padilha, who is the executive producer of the TV series Narcos, and has directed such films as the 2014 RoboCop.
Do you remember the song the Israeli soldiers sing in the plane, on their way to Uganda? Starts out softly with one guy, more join in, it gets louder and almost agressive? I learned that one from a Hebrew professor at the seminary I attended for one year. Kind of ironic, it’s Psalm 133:1. "How very good and pleasant it is when kindred(brothers) live together in unity."
I liked that movie. It didn’t make all the actors look good looking. Fat, skinny, old and young, most just looked like a regular crowd of ordinary folks.
No, that’s not how the Baader-Meinhoff couple thinks. They’re in love with the idea of being revolutionaries and overthrowing the “capitalist, fascist” regimes of the West and have convinced themselves that this joint operation with the PLO will be a good way to accomplish this.
In particular they’re hoping that they’ll be able to force the Western governments to release their “comrades” currently in prison.
They actually don’t kill any hostages nor do they enjoy what’s happening. In fact, by the end of the movie both seem to have deeply regretted it. Whether this is true or not I can’t say.
I’d also say that the audience is not meant to sympathize with them and if anything the audience is meant to sympathize with the flight engineer and several other passengers who confront them with the immorality of what they’re doing.
Keep in mind no “terrorist” thinks of themselves as evil or that what they’re doing is “fun” but whether they’re members of the IRA, the PKK, the Irgun or of course the PLO have convinced themselves that doing so will be for the greater good.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I think I remember that the generally rah-rah 1977 Israeli film Operation Thunderboltportrayed the male terrorist - played by Klaus Kinski! - somewhat sympathetically. I think they even had him purposely avoid killing hostages once the commandos burst in.
I guess it’s just good drama. Personally, I don’t think your enemy needs to be a bad guy for you to be a good guy.
Happens in Seven Days at Entebbe as well. He was the guy played by Daniel Bruhl.