PLOT: An airline pilot (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tries to keep control of his aircraft during a hijacking.
REVIEW: 7500, which just dropped on Amazon Prime earlier this week, is a taut, immersive thriller with a great hook. Imagine your typical hijacking drama but done from the perspective of the pilot, who’s locked in the cabin with no choice but to keep the plane on course for an emergency landing even when all hell is breaking loose in the rest of the plane. That alone would make for some high drama, although writer-director Patrick Vollrath ramps up the tension for making things even more personal for our pilot hero, with his partner and the mother of his child (Aylin Tezel) one of the flight attendants being held hostage. Plus, his co-pilot is dead, not to mention he’s been wounded so badly himself that his left arm no longer works, and oh yeah, one of the terrorists is unconscious in the cockpit and could wake up any second.
While Vollrath maybe introduces a few too many elements at times, even setting the film in Germany so that Levitt won’t be able to communicate with the terrorists except in broken exchanges with a panicked younger hijacker (Omid Memar), overall this is a very efficient little flick. It helps that the concept is a good one, and certainly something topical and timely. But the real ace up their sleeves is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who makes his first appearance on screen in three years as our pilot hero.
It’s hard not to sympathize with the personable actor, who has no choice but to assume an unflappable exterior if he’s going to land the plane safely and save the eighty-something passengers onboard. Levitt does give him a few convincing moments of panic, such as when he pleads over the intercom with his passengers to try and take the cabin back from the hijackers, who are only armed with broken glass bottles. You feel for his plight and, despite everything, he’s convincing even when he starts to empathize with the youngest hijacker, who’s clearly in way over his head, with his suicide mission being all too real when it starts to succeed.
Through it all, Vollrath keeps the film tightly paced, with it running just a shade over ninety minutes. There are no showy gimmicks here, rather it’s done in a gritty, docs-drama style, complete with no musical score. One isn’t needed, and the film takes place in real-time, making the whole thing all the more immersive. It’s a shame this never got the chance to go theatrical, as it would have been even more effective on the big screen, although it looks great in HDR on Prime.
One word of warning for those of you that watch it streaming – Prime seems to have a hard time figuring out subtitles in some regions. Here on the Canadian version of Prime, the English version of the movie didn’t default to English subtitles for the lengthy German sections of the film. I honestly watched half of the movie without subtitles assuming this was an artistic choice, as Levitt’s character isn’t supposed to understand the language and we’re being put in his shoes, but alas no – it’s supposed to have subtitles, which I found out once I activated them manually. It’s an annoying thing that crops up anytime they do international co-productions that are multi-lingual (I had the same issue on their excellent “ZeroZeroZero”).
Overall, 7500 is a tight little thriller that makes for compelling viewing, even if the filmmakers maybe stretch the premise a little too far by introducing one element after another to make Levitt’s journey even more terrifying. That said, it certainly makes for an entertaining watch, and on the merits of Levitt’s performance alone, this comes highly recommended.