7500 review – cockpit drama reaches for new heights

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an airline pilot in peril in a claustrophobic hijack movie that unfolds in near-real timePerched uneasily between the melodrama of 70s disaster movies such as the Airport series and the more sober horrors of Paul Greengrass’s 9/11 drama United 93, this lean hijack thriller marks a striking feature debut for German writer/director Patrick Vollrath.

Having earned an Oscar nomination for his 2015 short film Alles wird gut (Everything Will Be Okay), Vollrath demonstrates a slick technical ability tinged with a mainstream arthouse sensibility (he studied under Michael Haneke) that may well land him more spectacular commissions in the future.Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Tobias, an American co-pilot flying a commercial airliner from Berlin to Paris.

Onboard the plane, along with a full load of passengers, are flight attendant Gökce (Aylin Tezel), with whom Tobias has a young child, and a group of hijackers, first observed on thrummingly silent airport surveillance cameras,

Read full article