Victory at Entebbe (1976)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is the Soap Opera version of the Raid on Entebbe.About half of this movie is poorly written, a real shame. I couldn't believe that this all-star cast would sign up to make a movie of this low caliber.I have watched all 3 Entebbe movies. As others have commented, the "Raid on Entebbe" is strongly on point for the story at hand (the rescue of 101 Israelis held by terrorists)."Operation Thunderbolt" is also on-point, and has many of the actual players playing themselves, but it is largely unfocused.So, for the people who want to get lost in the background, "Victory" is the pick. I wish they could have taken this cast, and had them perform the Raid on Entebbe script ... it would be incredible.

In late June 1976, Air France flight 139--which had some 240 passengers on-board traveling from Athens to Paris--was hijacked by armed Arab terrorists who re-routed the plane to Entebbe, Uganda. All-star political adventure, filmed inexplicably on videotape (later transferred, with poor results, to film), was shown on ABC-TV just a few months ahead of NBC's version of the story, "Raid on Entebbe"; it was a rush job to beat the clock, and it shows. The harrowing facts of the ordeal have a tough time making an impact here, what with Ernest Kinoy's teleplay whipped up on the spot and Julius Harris stepping in for Godfrey Cambridge at the eleventh hour as dictator Idi Amin. The casting is certainly interesting; these stars must have had a vested interest in the proceedings and felt a great need to be a part of the experience, even if three-dimensional roles weren't exactly waiting for them (Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Taylor, in particular, are poorly used). Some suspense and excitement near the finale, but it's long and talky when it should have been a gripping docu-drama.

This and "Raid on Entebbe" were American all-star takes on the Entebbe rescue. The definitive movie is "Operation Thunderbolt" (in IMDb under its Hebrew name, "Mivtsa Yonatan"). It was the only one made with the cooperation of the Israeli government, and has Israelis in all the Israeli roles.For movie buffs, though, it's fun spotting well-known actors (like Burt Lancaster) here and in "Raid" whose Judaism was downplayed or concealed by the studios earlier in their careers.For Star Trek fans, Theodore Bikel (Worf's father) has a major role and Bibi Besch (Dr. Carol Marcus in Star Trek II) appears in passing.

It is not surprising that something as utterly dramatic and swift as Israel's lightning raid at Entebbe against a planeload of Palestinian hijackers holding over one hundred of their own should make for a movie. Instead, however, there were three, of which this is the first.This made-for-TV movie, which somehow bought together an all-star cast and was shot, edited, and aired within a mere five months of the Entebbe event, which happened under cover of darkness on July 4, 1976, shows some of the faults of being shot largely in a studio and on videotape (later transferred to film). But what we get, thanks to veteran TV director Marvin Chomsky and writer Ernest Kinoy, is a rather good account of perhaps the most dramatic anti-terrorist raid the world has ever seen. Burt Lancaster and Anthony Hopkins are matchless as Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, with Richard Dreyfuss contribuing his usual best as Colonel Yonni Netanyahu, the only casualty the Israeli military suffered during the raid.The cast also includes Kirk Douglas, Linda Blair, Elizabeth Taylor, Helen Hayes, Christian Marquand (as the Air France pilot), and Harris Yulin, among others. The only performance that seems full of ham to me is Julius Harris' as the ultra-notorious Ugandan president Idi Amin; it is so over the top (though perhaps that is a bit harsh, as the real Amin was far, far worse).This is a somewhat imperfect version of the story, but nevertheless worth the 7-out-of-10 rating it gets from me.