Showing posts with label James Woods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Woods. Show all posts

16 November 2010

Raid on Entebbe


In cooperation with some of the finest movie blogs I know, Lost Video Archive is proud to contribute this post to Kotto Week, an event focusing on the long, extensive and diverse career of this underappreciated actor. A full list of participants follows this post.


United States - 1976
Director - Irvin Kershner
Thorn EMI Home Viedo, 1984, VHS
Run Time -1 hour, 53 minutes

Raid On Entebbe is a made for television historical dramatization of Operation Entebbe/Thunderbolt which took place on 4 July, 1976.  Seven days earlier a group of 4 hijackers had taken over a plane headed from Athens to Tel Aviv Israel and flew it to Lybia and subsequently to a Uganda suffering through its fifth year of Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Israeli commandos flew all the way to Entebbe to pull a surprise raid on the airport where the remaining hostages were being held.

Contrary to what I’m sure was a tense situation in reality, it is pretty dull here, and at 40 minutes I feel like a hostage of a thinly scripted glorification of Israeli military valor and absolution from responsibility for violence. With an excessively hefty cast that includes Charles Bronson, John Saxon, Peter Finch, James Woods, Martin Balsam, Horst Bucholtz and yes, Yaphet Kotto, there is enough time to parade each actor across the screen, but not enough to give any of their characters depth. Raid on Entebbe is a film that is a prisoner of its precise moment in time, for without a knowledge of the events, it makes little sense. Nevertheless, Kotto manages well with his few minutes of screen time as Idi Amin.

Unfortunately this seems to be typical of the roles played by Kotto. His talents are restricted to supporting characters (where he nevertheless frequently outperforms the leads). Historians of blacks in film have repeatedly pointed out that Hollywood has had a very difficult time coping with a fully humanized strong black male lead. This may be why Kotto took to television, where the work was more frequent if not more empowering for his roles, but that’s only my theory. It’s simply sad that Kotto so rarely had a chance to apply his skill to a character with real human depth. Subsequently, I think there is an interesting theoretical connection between Kotto and his role here as Idi Amin. Amin was perhaps the perfect dramatic foil for the period in the mid 70’s. He was a crazy black man at a time when American culture had just exhausted itself on the Civil Rights movement and The Great Society. White people needed a reason to believe they had, and to be seen as having "done enough", to feel that they had atoned for their guilt, and that anyone who wasn't satisfied, who still wanted more, or who simply refused to be quiet were baaaaad niggers.

I’m not trying to recast Amin as merely a victim of bad press, he was very much a real tyrant. However, because his sociopathic egotism was largely meted out upon his own people it made him easier to dismiss in the West. He could be treated as a pitiable, posturing “martinet”, and exemplified as a "type". The white status quo didn’t (and still doesn’t) know how to deal with forceful and assertive black characters who act bigger than the britches they have been given, so it continues to disempower, mock and stereotype them, including by relegating them supporting or comedic roles in film and history.

Aside from pointing out that Israeli commandos are good (and they were, but  even that is boring in this film), Raid on Entebbe manages to not say much at all except that Idi Amin was unstable and vindictive. Any film about Amin practically begs comparison to other performances of this unique and bizarre historical figure. Joseph Olita’s in Amin: The Rise and Fall, Julius Harris’s in Victory at Entebbe, Forest Whittaker’s in Last King of Scotland, and the real deal himself in Barbet Schroeder's documentary Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait which feels as much like an elaborate put-on as any of the others. In the few minutes of screen time he is afforded as Amin (this film is really about Israels political image), Yaphet Kotto manages to better the first two and come damn close to the second two. It is ironic that Yaphet Kotto makes Amin the most interesting and complex character in an otherwise boring film.




This VHS cover (?) comes from Amazon U.K

This poster I got from The Warsaw Jewish Film Festival site is the creation of artist John Solie, his signature appears on the far left next to the C-130 aircraft. Solie was responsible for innumerable posters in the golden age of poster art. You can read my blurb about him here.

This poster courtesy NYCJunta.

Visit these other participants as Kotto Week progresses:
Monday Nov. 15th
Unflinching Eye - Alien
Raculfright 13's Blogo Trasho - Truck Turner
Tuesday Nov. 16th
Lost Video Archive - Raid on Entebbe
Manchester Morgue - Friday Foster
Wednesday Nov. 17th
Booksteve's Library - Live and Let Die
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12 November 2010

Badge of the Assassin


United States - 1985
Director - Mel Damski
Vidmark Entertainment, 1989, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 36 minutes
Starring - Yaphet Kotto and James Woods

Come on, this is one of Kotto's best performances in the 80's and despite his face being above Woods', he isn't even listed on the cover. Incredible box fail. This was the second time that Kotto and Woods worked together on a film, the first was 1976's Raid on Entebbe which I cover on Tuesday for Kotto Week. As I said just above, Kotto is terrific in this, as is Woods, both turn in fantastic performances, the subject matter of the movie bears a bit more analysis.
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