Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Kodie Bird True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

MARIO GAUCI Following my recent viewing of Israeli director Moshe' Mizrahi's French movie MADAME ROSA – the 1977 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film – I decided to watch the only remaining contender in that category sooner rather than later. As it turned out, the official Israeli entry was the weakest of the five final selections and I am guessing that its sheer topicality – being based on a very recent hijacking episode that had grabbed world headlines – was what made it jump ahead of other notable competitors among the 24 international Oscar submissions, namely Larisa Shepitko's THE ASCENT, Wim Wenders' THE American FRIEND, Bo Widerberg's THE MAN ON THE ROOF (1976), Paul Verhoeven's SOLDIER OF ORANGE and Krzysztof Zanussi's CAMOUFLAGE.For the record, my relative disappointment with OPERATION THUNDERBOLT has just been exacerbated by my discovering that I had acquired and watched the U.S. Theatrical Version (culled from a TV screening on the MGM channel) – which has characters mostly speaking their lines in English, barring the occasional lapses into French and German – rather than the original version which has characters (be they Israeli, German, French or African) rightfully speaking in their native tongue...and which is available as a "Full Movie" video on "You Tube" and on a renowned torrent download site! Having said that, craggy-faced chief hijacker Klaus Kinski's equally distinctive voice can be heard in both versions but, apart from his trigger-happy cohort Sybil Danning and nemesis Assaf Dayan (as the Israeli commando second-in-command), he is the only recognizable name in the cast...that is, if one is to discount the personal, silent appearances of the Israeli politicians that faced the crisis in real life, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres; in any case, the acting honours here are stolen by Yehoram Gaon as the ill-fated commando leader Yonatan Netanyahu (who, at one point, is amusingly seen reading Alistair MacLean's "Circus" - a novel I also read myself as a kid). This sharply contrasts with the contemporaneous, star-studded, rival re-enactments of the events for U.S. TV, namely VICTORY AT ENTEBBE (1976; which I had intended watching last year for Burt Lancaster's centenary but had to jettison it due to time constraints) and RAID ON ENTEBBE (1977) – both of which, incidentally, also exist in longer and shorter edits.While the fact that the viewer is aware from the outset of the narrative's outcome can perhaps lead to the film feeling rather predictable, the presence of a surprisingly restrained Kinski (billed "Kinsky" in the all-English opening credits!) and Danning make up for that; on the other hand, while the final assault on Entebbe airport occurs towards the very end of the film and can thus appear to be a long time coming, the swift depiction of it is quite electrifying (especially the sight of Kinski's twitching body as it expires early on in a hail of machine-gun bullets). Seeing the names of commercial 1980s Hollywood entity Cannon Group founders Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus among the makers of this film somewhat undermine its proposed authenticity (shot with the full co-operation of the Israeli government and Air Force); indeed OPERATION THUNDERBOLT (which, decades afterwards, also became the name of a video game!) succeeds more as an action movie than a psychological or political thriller which might not have been congenial to this particular subject but serves as a veritable template for the later Cannon Group star-studded blockbuster THE DELTA FORCE (1986; also helmed by Golan and easily Chuck Norris' most prestigious star vehicle) complete with overblown rousing music throughout.

Eumenides_0 In 1976 an airplane travelling from Tel Aviv to Paris made a stop in Athens and was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists. They flew the plane to the Entebbe airport in Uganda, then under the rule of the dictator Idi Amin, separated the Israeli passengers from the others and threatened to kill them if Israel didn't release several Palestinian prisoners. Israel's response was to organise one of the most perfect rescue operations in the history of rescue operations.Operation Thunderbolt was not the first dramatisation of this rescue but was the first one fully made by Israelis, with the collaboration of the Israeli government and the Israeli Air Force. This has worked simultaneously in its favour and detriment. From a purely factual and realistic perspective, it's the best dramatisation of the events. But the movie carries a slight stench of propaganda – one gets quickly tired of listening to characters declaring Israel as the greatest country in the world; even if that is true, there is a thing called modesty. Israel is a small country that has successfully repelled attacks from its neighbouring enemies. I can understand how that inflates its citizens with a sense of ego. But one thing is national pride; chauvinism is something quite different. Watching this movie I also remembered some of the criticism the Brazilian movie Elite Squad was levelled with: this movie sounds and looks like a massive recruitment campaign. Join the army and kick ass! The movie also has a bipolar approach to some of the factual events of the hijacking. On the one hand, it surprisingly portrays the terrorists in a very objective light. I can't imagine a better choice to play the terrorist leader than the devilish Klaus Kinski, an actor who portrayed evil so seductively. Kinski's terrorist sees himself as a freedom fighter, an idealist who believes in the Palestinian cause. He's smart, in control and attentive to the needs of his hostages. Kinski plays Wilfried Böse. Böse's terrorist career was recently portrayed in the French TV series Carlos, which briefly references the Entebbe Operation. Böse was a left-wing revolutionary who opposed imperialism and dreamed of a world revolution to make the world a fairer place. Like many revolutionaries of his time, he embraced the Palestinian causes as a just one. This movie sadly skips most of the historical context but still portrays him as a credible person and not as a caricature.On the other hand the movie fails to clearly address the fact that this wasn't about kidnapping Jewish people but Israeli citizens. In the harrowing sequence when the passengers are separated in two groups, we're shown the passengers being divided between Jews and Gentiles. In fact several Jewish people who did not have an Israeli passport were released. The terrorists retained only Israelis citizens. This for me is the movie's major weakness – trying to frame the event as a crime of anti-Semitism and not putting in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where terrorists are motivated not by ethnic but political reasons. In other words, the movie shows the Israelis being kidnapped just because they're Jews and not because they belong to a country whose successive governments have been accused of committing war crimes too. This simple victimisation and lack of self-scrutiny is the strongest criticism I can level against this otherwise remarkable thriller.Politics aside, Operation Thunderbolt is an amazing adrenaline rush, tightly edited and always moving at a frantic pace, shifting between the Israeli forces and the terrorists, keeping the viewer glued to the screen as he impatiently waits for the spectacular climax. The movie opens with Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu (Yehoram Gaon) training with his men for hijacking situations in a foreshadowing of the actual operation. Yonatan is never satisfied with his men's results and has them repeat the exercises over and over. Then the action moves to Athens, introducing the passengers. Several are described in broad strokes and immediately gain the viewer's sympathy. When the terrorists take over the plane, the viewer is already on the hostages' side.Although the outcome is already known, the movie sustains a high note of suspense. The ending doesn't lose one iota of its emotional impact just because we know the hostages will be saved. After sharing with the hostages their plight, I think any viewer will finish this movie feeling a triumphant joy. There are happy endings a dime a dozen and then there are endings that fill us with a deep sense of justice, that leave us with the impression that the world has been put back in order.I couldn't finish this review without praising Dov Seltzer's score, whose powerful main theme is played throughout the movie with several variations in tone, from elegiac to a fast-paced groovy theme that screams '70s. Seltzer's music is almost the cement that holds movie together and deftly underscores the tension and the horror of the story. Like the movie, the score is an unknown gem awaiting greater recognition.Menahem Golan achieved some success in the United States after this movie. He went on to make The Delta Force, with Chuck Norris. I never saw it and I don't know much about Golan's style. In this movie he thankfully didn't try to make anything too ostentatious. He shoots the scenes with simplicity and the certainty that the true story is enough to carry the movie, and indeed it is.

dreamdemon-1 It seems that just after the events, the subject was so hot that is went on to be over exploited in both small and wide screen movies. Unfortunately, all movies are near-sighted and tell the story from a single point of view, the Israeli one, which seems to be deemed equivalent to the entire world's point of view. When a movie recounts historical events, I would like that movie to exploit the subject to a reasonable depth and keep the circumstances realistic. I have held the same problem against the more recent '300' movie, as well as others and this happened with most movies that have one side against another: simply telling the world "we're better than the others" isn't enough, this has to be shown from a fair and direct comparison that the spectator can relate to.

rshay This 1977 Oscar nominated film in the category of "Best Foreign Film" is based on the true story of the rescue mission led by a young Israeli Army officer, Jonathan "Yoni" Netanyaho that astounded the world. Yoni's brother, Benjamin Netanyaho would go on to become the Prime Minister of Israel. This film still stands today with the other films about the Entebbe rescue as an inspiration of what can be accomplished when heroic people of honor and determination, the Israel Defense Forces, come face to face with the forces of evil, in this case German and Palestinian terrorists. There is no fluff in this movie, just an honest portrayal of heroism by the innocent civilian hostages, the Air France flight crew and the IDF soldiers, pilots and flight crews. To truly define this film I would like to quote in part a letter from Benjamin Netanyaho which come with each 25th Anniversary DVD. "........The story of Yoni and his comrades in Entebbe sheds light on the other heroes of Israel, known and unsung alike, who through their sacrifice and courage delivered our people time and again from the abyss of disaster, in the wars of Israel as at Entebbe. I can only hope that their great spirit, as captured in this film, will serve to meet the great challenges that still await us."