OPERATION THUNDERBOLT by Menahem Golan
by Andre Soares
Mivtsa Yonatan / Operation Thunderbolt (1977) 
Director: Menahem Golan. Screenplay: Menahem Golan and Clarke Reynolds. Cast: Klaus Kinski, Yehoram Gaon, Sybil Danning, Assaf Dayan, Gila Almagor
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNFASHIONABLE
Despite the complex and gripping real-life basis for Mivtsa Yonatan / Operation Thunderbolt — the 1976 hijacking of a Tel-Aviv-Athens-Paris Air France flight — director-co-producer-co-scenarist Menahem Golan managed to make a film utterly devoid of suspense, depth, or intelligence. With its cheap look — despite full cooperation from the Israeli armed forces — subpar craftsmanship, and one-dimensional characters, Operation Thunderbolt is nothing more than your below-average 1970s movie-of-the-week. (In fact, it is so mediocre that it earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film.)
Screenwriters Golan and Clarke Reynolds were apparently so busy elaborating cliché-ridden dialogue and flag-waving monologues that they made no effort to add psychological depth to any of the characters. Thus, Jews are either poor victims or brave warriors, while terrorists are mean, grenade-carrying people with no taste in clothes or sunglasses.
Not surprisingly, with the exception of Yehoram Gaon’s charismatic turn as commando leader Col. Yonatan Netanyahu (the older brother of future Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu), the performances come across flatter than cardboards. Even Klaus Kinski, a master scenery-chewer, is quite sedate here — and for once, I badly missed his Nosferatu fangs.
Now, it would be naïve to expect an unbiased historical context from a film that shows the Israeli rescue commandos through deifying camera angles reminiscent of those used in The Thunderbirds or The X-Men. But it must be pointed out that such gross disregard for subtlety ends up working against the film. For even though Operation Thunderbolt is a retelling of actual events — it even boasts the appearance (via documentary footage) of several Israeli government officials — its propagandistic tone is so blatant that the uninformed viewer will keep wondering not how much, but how little of what is shown may actually have any connection to reality.
Synopsis:
June 27, 1976. After takeoff from Athens, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris is hijacked by Arab and German terrorists. Following an unsuccessful attempt to keep the plane in Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya, the hijackers fly to the airport in Entebbe, Uganda, where they are welcomed by that country’s dictator, Idi Amin Dada. Once in Entebbe, the Jewish passengers are separated from the others — the non-Jews are freed, the Jews are held in the airport as hostages. In order to release the Jewish passengers, the hijackers demand that Israel free several convicted terrorists held in the country’s jails. If the Israeli government fails to meet the set deadline, the hijackers will kill all the hostages.
Feeling pressure from the Israeli population to save the passengers, the Israeli government debates the merits and the dangers of a rescue operation. Finally, they decide on allowing an elite commando unit to raid the Entebbe airport and free the hostages.
DVD:
Whether or not the problem lies with the source material, the Region 1 DVD (U.S. / Canada / U.S. territories) transfer of Operation Thunderbolt is quite poor. The washed-out picture looks like that of an old TV movie, while the sound often has the muffled quality usually found in poorly dubbed films. Making matters more complicated, in certain scenes the English subtitles appear several seconds later than they should. Russian and Hebrew subtitles are also available.
On the second disc, the DVD offers the 60-minute documentary Raid on Entebbe. Although this documentary offers a more thorough historical context to the hijacking and its aftermath, it suffers from about as much tendentiousness as Operation Thunderbolt. Even so, it is worth a look.
A Sisu Home Entertainment release. 25th Anniversary Special Edition. Two-disc set.
List price: US$59.95.
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