'7500' A Review

7500 is a thriller about a flight from Berlin to Paris that is hijacked. The movie opens on CCTV footage of the various terrorist going through the airport then cuts to co-pilot Tobias(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) boarding with the captain, and Tobias talks briefly with Nathalie(Aurélie Thépaut) his girlfriend(wife?) one of the flight attendants. Shortly after take off the cockpit is rushed, the captain is attacked but Tobias manages to close the door and incapacitate one of the terrorists. The terrorists threaten hostages if Tobias doesn't open the door while is instructed to make an emergency landing.

JGL really goes for broke- he screams and pounds and weeps and gnashes his teeth but for all his effort these exertions ring mostly hollow, it is in the all too brief quiet moments when he actually does some convincing acting. The various terrorists are mostly reduced to raging, mouth frothing, lunatics, virtual stereotypes. The one that seems conflicted Vedat played by Omid Memar has some interesting scenes and moments but he too, whether by direction or interpretation, is also mostly prone to incoherent, illogical screaming. The other cast members although probably talented, are on screen so briefly their appearance is almost totally negligible.

It is unclear what the movie intends to be, a hijacking thriller in the vein of Air Force One or an intimate but compelling struggle like 127 Hours and Locke it seems to attempt both and in so doing fail at both. Time is not taken to get to know Tobias or the attackers, and with the majority of the runtime taking place in the intimate cockpit the action falls significantly short of thrilling. Not to mention the subject matter, which feels a decade or more past relevance and offers nothing particularly original let alone thoughtful. A miss.

Currently streaming on Amazon.

Don't See It.