Can they make flight hijacking films worth it? I don’t think there have been hundreds on this topic, but a few already and they take place in such a small space. A plane. And there is a good chance that we will know how they end. After 9/11, there is almost no way it ends with the plane going into a tower, that is for certain. Either the good guys win, or it crashes somewhere else, but that is it.
Where can this genre go?
7500, not to be confused with Flight 7500, is a German/American film and was originally going to star Paul Dano before delays and scheduling conflicts. No matter how good this film is, I am going to say it would hav been better with Dano. I love Dano.
This is a poor man’s Dano.
Just kidding! Highjackers!
A group of men immediately try to get into the cockpit when an attendant is bringing them food!
Oh no!
Tobias is able to close the door to the cockpit with only one man getting in the pit, and also help knock him out, but the pilot is a goner. Tobias has to man the flight on his own (which is okay) but he did get stabbed in the arm. He has to deal with a man inside the cockpit who could come to at any moment, and two men trying to barge their way in and are willing to kill hostages to get the door open.
What is a man to do? The air traffic controller tells him to do an emergency landing in a nearby city and to under no circumstances open the door. But when they target his girlfriend and other innocents, can he really keep his composure?
Also starring Hicham Sebia, Omid Memar, Passar Hariky, Aylin Tezel, Paul Wollin, and Aurélie Thépaut.
Always gotta be looking back scared, come on man. Eyes on the road.
Why Mr. Gorgon? Why should I watch this film? Does it offer anything unique?
Thanks for the leading question to the last part of my review! Yes, this film has one reason to give it a chance. Outside of some security tapes at the very beginning, and one other part, the entirety of the film takes place in the cockpit.
So yes, you are going to get a whole lot of JGL on your screen. He isn’t always on the screen. Sometimes our focus is outside of the front window, or the other characters in the cockpit, or more importantly, on his video monitor of what is happening behind the door when talking with the terrorists.
If anything, this definitely changes the way we see cabin fever, and builds on the claustrophobia and sense of being trapped in an unwinnable situation. That is where the movie shines.
I also have a theory. If they didn’t give us subtitles for the non-English languages it would have helped with the fear and helplessness. Because Tobias only knows English, so can’t even communicate well with the staff. This changes things if the viewer understands German or Arabic or Turkish (I believe all three are spoken), but then we could have added some scarier elements overall.
Instead, we get a normal story told in a better than normal way. It has fine acting, a lot of yelling, and some hard moral choices overall. Definitely worth a gander, since it is free on Amazon Prime.