Gordon-Levitt shines in smart airplane hijacking nail-biter
If you’ve been frustrated that you haven’t been able to fly anywhere for months now and have spent hours daydreaming about your next air travel jaunt, the new picture 7500 will snap you out of your reverie, and make you glad you’re stuck safely on the ground. The smart, taut thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a few problematic story elements, but mostly succeeds as a unique take on the typical Hollywood trouble-in-the-sky action pic.
If this film had been made here in the States, it likely would have starred Liam Neeson as the tough American hero saving the day, and its conclusion would never be in doubt. However, lucky for us, 7500 is the first feature film by the award winning short-film German director Patrick Vollrath, and so its tone is much more foreign indie than American blockbuster. We’ve been so conditioned by good guy vs. bad guy movies that we think we know how the film’s sequences are going to play out. Vollrath and his screenwriter Senad Halilbasic are far more clever than those tropes, however, and keep us on our toes throughout, creating unbearable tension and serving up completely unexpected turns of events.
“7500” is the airport code for a hijacking, so the film’s title gives away its plot right there. Vollrath establishes the sense of dread immediately, as he opens his picture with mute security camera footage of people milling around the Berlin airport, nerve-wracking in its silence. Immediately we know there’s danger ahead: who are we looking at? Who is boarding our plane, and who could be a terrorist?
Gordon-Levitt, the only American actor in the film, plays Tobias, the American first officer and second-in-command on a short, 85-passenger flight from Berlin to Paris. To ratchet up the stakes even more, Halilbasic gives Tobias a German-Turkish flight attendant girlfriend (Aylin Tezel), who, naturally, is working the flight he’s co-piloting. And of course they have a two-year-old son waiting at home for them.
Vollrath takes his time setting the stage, further increasing our sense of unease. A scene in which Tobias and the pilot (Carlo Kitzlinger) go through their pre-flight checklist feels mundane at first, but is effective at making us antsy, since we know as soon they’re done and in the air, they’ll be in horrific trouble. And, indeed, soon enough the terrorists make their move (security didn’t detect their glass knives, in case you’re wondering). They demand access to the cockpit, and threaten to kill passengers if they don’t get their way.
Here is where the screenplay becomes a bit problematic. The terrorists are Muslim radicalized Germans of Turkish descent (the fact that Tezel’s character is Turkish as well becomes a convenient plot point), and their goal is not to be flown somewhere, but to crash the plane (echoes of 9/11) to, in the screenplay’s words, “avenge the deaths of Muslims killed by Westerners.” Really? That’s the best the film can come up with? Making radicalized Muslims the villains, and then giving them a vague “We hate the West” motivation feels cheap, lazy, stereotypical, and not exactly like the best call in today’s current climate of trying to strive for compassion and understanding among so many disparate groups.
One of the terrorists, Vedat (Omar Memar), becomes more prominent in the picture, though, and Halilbasic does try to humanize him by making him young, scared, and increasingly on the fence about his mission (although at one point Vedat takes a call from his mother, which feels like an over the top way to prove he’s not as evil as his compatriots). Without giving too much away, the storyline eventually focuses on the young, impressionable Vedat and Tobias and their struggle for physical control of the plane and psychological control of each other. The scenes of the two of them in the cramped cockpit are some of the picture’s best, as we are right there with Tobias, absorbing his claustrophobia, anger, anxiety, and fear.
The role is a terrific one for Gordon-Levitt, whose boyish looks haven’t always made him a go-to for serious, dramatic roles. But he more than holds his own here, turning in a complex, fully realized performance that relies on his measured demeanor and quiet intelligence. He’s no raging, towering Liam Neeson, and the film is better for it.
So take some of the awkward plot points with a grain of salt, sit back, and prepare to be immersed in well-crafted and intense suspense. Believe me: you’ll be relieved you’re watching the picture from the too-familiar comfort of your living room, and not 35,000 feet in the air.
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7500 is available today on Amazon Prime.
