Stream It Or Skip It: ‘7500’ on Amazon Prime, a Pilot-vs.-Hijackers Nailbiter Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Your fingernails may not survive 7500, a new Amazon Prime exclusive movie that derives its title from air traffic-control code-lingo for “hijacking.” The single-setting, minimalist feature debut from director Patrick Vollrath — an Oscar nominee for his 2015 short Everything Will Be Okay — stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a commercial airline pilot stuck in the aforementioned crisis. It’s not a question of whether or not the movie will be hair-raising, but rather, how hair-rising it’ll be.

7500: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The Berlin airport. Opening credits fade in and out as security cameras focus on a few individuals. One buys bottles of liquor from a shop. Moments later, Tobias (Gordon-Levitt) climbs into his cockpit seat, kisses Gokce (Aylin Tezel), his flight-attendant girlfriend, and they chat briefly about their two-year-old son, who’s staying with his grandmother. He and the captain, Michael (Carlo Kitzlinger), go through pre-flight procedures — pressing these buttons, flipping those switches, ordering sandwiches, deciding if they want to wait for two missing passengers. They have this much fuel and it’ll take that much time to get to Paris.

In the air, past some turbulence, at cruising altitude, the sandwiches arrive. Thus established is the black-and-white monitor on the back wall of the cockpit, which shows who’s on the other side of the door, which only the pilots can unlock. As the flight attendant leans in with lunch, three men rush the door with knives fashioned from broken glass. Michael is stabbed multiple times. Tobias takes a vicious wound to his left arm. As Michael wrestles with his assailant. Tobias forces another man from the cockpit and locks the door. Tobias knocks out the hijacker with a fire extinguisher, ties his hands with medical tape. He steadies the plane, assesses Michael, alerts air traffic control, performs CPR and sweats like mad. Bad day.

It’s now up to Tobias to fly a plane one-handed, worry if the hijacker in the cockpit will wake up, try to talk the other hijackers out of hurting any passengers or flight attendants and make a lot of decisions that nobody should ever have to make. He converses with air traffic control; he switches the camera on the other side of the door off; he switches it back on. And he has to do all this while maintaining focus, sweating like crazy, keeping an eye on procedure (DON’T EVER OPEN THE DOOR is the big rule) and his heart on moral concerns while the bad guys pound and pound and pound and pound on the door, which sounds a lot like death knocking.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Terrifying airplane movies: Flight minus the alcoholism, United 93 minus the harrowing true story, Sully minus the slightly less-harrowing true story. One-setting thrillers: Locke but slightly less minimal, Buried but in a less literal coffin, Lifeboat but in a plane.

Performance Worth Watching: This is Gordon-Levitt by default, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t fully committed to his everyman-under-extreme-circumstances role. He shows strength, he shows vulnerability, he shows he’s human, and convincingly so.

Memorable Dialogue: “It’s not a disaster,” Tobias reassures Gocke about a soon-to-be-highly-irrelevant problem they’ll have to deal with at home.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Appreciate this taut, captivating sort-of-arthouse thriller the one and only time you’ll watch it, claustrophobes. 7500 is a tight one, where you can sense Gordon-Levitt’s hot hyperventilations, the tension suffocating you in the crowded space where you’ll spend the majority of the movie’s 92 minutes. Please notice I said “appreciate,” not “enjoy.” This will be a grueling watch for many, which certainly seems to be Vollrath’s intention.

Some will pooh-pooh certain plot developments as convenient, but they are plausible in the context, e.g., a young terrorist having second thoughts and behaving unpredictably. Does the movie need to be an uncompromising exercise in cold-steel Michael Haneke relentlessness in order to be dramatically effective and credible? Nope. Absolutely not. In such situations, it’s no stretch to say that luck plays a part. Preparation plays a part. Instinct plays a part. Vollrath and co-screenwriter Senad Halilbasic cover all three in a relatively realistic manner, and Gordon-Levitt is absolutely on their wavelength.

The film is too visceral and fiercely immediate for much subtext — although the terrorists are Islamic extremists, insert deep sigh here. It’s simply a tried-and-true what-would-you-do-in-that-situation scenario, framed by a Gandhi quote at the opening (“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”), its only suggestive component. Omar Medmar, playing one of the hijackers, is a solid scene stealer in the third act, when Vollrath cultivates suspense in the thick, hanging silence between two terrified, exhausted men. Cancel your manicure appointment and spend the money on booze instead.

Our Call: STREAM IT. 7500 is a prime example of a director setting strict limitations for a narrative, and exploiting every procedural nook and emotionally wrought cranny within it. Watch it once and say you survived it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream 7500 on Amazon Prime