As an exercise in tension, the hijack thriller 7500 delivers gripping goods in its nerve-fraying tale of a mild-mannered pilot desperate to land a Berlin to Paris flight while under siege by a trio of kamikaze Muslim extremists determined for it to crash and burn. In a scaled down survival drama, German writer/director Patrick Vollrath exploits maximum unease from a contained set, an effective star turn and a situational worst nightmare.
A German co-production co-written with cool efficiency by Bosnian screenwriter Senad Halilbasic, the picture opens with CTV footage of potentially suspicious passengers in the airport terminal whom we witness unassumingly boarding the plane, a simple conceit that produces, during the mundane take-off protocol, significant suspense. We know something is going to happen. But when?
In the cockpit we meet first officer Tobias Ellis (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the lone American crew member, accompanied and his flight attendant girlfriend, half-Turkish Gökce (Aylin Tezel), the pair bantering on the best options for their young son’s school. The captain, Michael (Carlo Kitzlinger), who insists the ground crew speak in English to accommodate Tobias, is miffed about late passengers delaying takeoff. These are simple yet effectively engaging character details in an expert initial 15 minutes of rudimentary protocols that hold us in fear, a step ahead of the principals in our knowledge of impending dread.
Immediately upon takeoff the terrorists orchestrate a coup to breach the cockpit door and, partially successful, badly wound the captain. Left with an injured pilot and an unconscious terrorist in the secured cockpit, and 85 passengers in the cabin, what else to do but an emergency landing, right?
Vollrath expertly ratchets suspense as the terrorist begin executing hostages and Tobias, instructed to open the cockpit under no circumstances, confronts an ethical dilemma about which lives to save. Talk about a devil’s bargain.
Unfolding in real-time, a canny conceit that allows for realism minus any trickery, 7500 is brass tacks storytelling: plane takes off, plane is hijacked, plane struggles to land. Yet the moment to moment intensity as Tobias struggles to tend to his wounds while keeping the cockpit door secure and the plane in air, produces feverish tension.
Since the movie entirely takes place in the cramped cockpit, 7500 utilizes every corner of the restricted quarters, exploited by DP Sebastian Thaler exploiting every shadowy corner, instrument panel and the eerie, black-and-white security cam capturing dreadful events directly outside. Despite such confines, the film feel stage bound, rather, the fluid lensing provides excellent spatial recognition in a pinched place where four desperate characters intersect.
Despite action movie subject matter, the picture avoids easy technical flourishes—musical score, rapid editing, set-pieces—in favor of a largely quiet sound design, emphasizing diegetic, unnerving sound effects. The unrelenting banging on the door and faint sounds of screaming passengers lend the proceedings an effective, paranoid realism.
Grounding the melee is a virtuoso Joseph Gordon-Levitt, eschewing Hollywood heroic exploits in favor of a minimalist, emotional portrait of an everyman facing mortal danger while making terribly difficult ethical decisions. He’s matched by a sensational Omid Memar as the youngest of the henchmen, whose own fear of mortality fissures his commitment to the terrorist plot, setting up an ideological showdown in the picture’s final half-hour. It’s here that the picture decidedly avoids stereotyping in favor of a growing, necessary for survival symbiosis. Memar, impressively veering from hysteria to hyperventilation to vulnerability, presents a believable confused young man who, more than anything, misses his mother, allowing the picture to dispense with stereotypes.
7500 is a lean machine of a popcorn thriller, surprisingly thoughtful in its final reel and delivered with precision and polish. Whether it’s closer to Turbulence or United 93 is debatable, and as fiction it obviously lacks the cultural context of Greengrass’ expert 9/11 actioner, but it grabs you, shakes you up and provides two believably distraught, and very different, men. As for the always dependable Gordon-Levitt, he’s eminently watchable charting the picture’s ethical quagmires while fighting to survive.
3 stars.
