‘Operation Thunderbolt’: 50 years to the heroic raid on Entebbe

Welcome to The Reel Schmooze with ToI film reviewer Jordan Hoffman and host Amanda Borschel-Dan, where we bring you all the entertainment news and film reviews a Jew can use.

This week, Borschel-Dan starts the episode with important news: She finally finished “My Name Is Barbra,” Barbra Streisand’s much-discussed 900+-page autobiography.

WATCH the full episode here:

Turning to the main event: Fifty years since the daring IDF rescue of over 100 hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, we dedicated this week’s The Reel Schmooze to two movies: the 1977 feature film “Operation Thunderbolt” and the 2012 documentary, “Live or Die in Entebbe.”

Shot with the help of the Israeli government only a year after the raid, “Operation Thunderbolt” presents a fictionalized account grounded in the realism of documentary footage of Israeli leaders, including then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then-defense minister Shimon Peres.

Directed and co-written by Menachem Golan, it stars Israeli actor/singer Yehoram Gaon, who plays the head of the Sayeret Matkal unit, Yoni Netanyahu (the brother of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). We also hear about other key performances from Klaus Kinski and Sybil Danning, who play the villainous German terrorists, as well as appearances by notable Israeli actors.

In the final segment of the program, we hear about a documentary that focuses on the family of one of the fallen hostages, Jean-Jacques Mimouni, a 19-year-old French-Israeli.

Let’s hear who gave these two films an “oy,” “meh” or the prized “not bad” this week on The Reel Schmooze.

The Reel Schmooze is produced by Ari Schlacht and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.

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