Review: Hijack thriller '7500' is a one-room tension machine, lifted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's well-grounded performance

Thrillers don’t get tighter, or more economical, than “7500,” a terrorist nail-biter where the action takes place almost entirely in real time in one space: The cockpit of a hijacked airliner.

Things seem to be starting normally as the flight attendants get the 85 passengers on board a nighttime Berlin-to-Paris flight, while the German pilot, Michael Lutzmann (Carlo Kitzlinger) and his American first officer, Tobias Ells (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), go over the pre-flight details. Before takeoff, one of the flight attendants, Gökce (Aylin Tezel), talks to Tobias about where their 2-year-old son should go to kindergarten. (They keep their relationship quiet at work, Tobias tells Capt. Michael.)

Shortly into the flight, men force their way into the cockpit, using shivs fashioned from glass shards and duct tape. They stab Capt. Michael in the gut and put a big gash in Tobias’s left arm, before Tobias can close the cockpit door on one attacker and knock another unconscious. Tobias radios in the situation, a 7500 — air-traffic code, we’re told, for a hijacking in progress.

Tobias must follow a strict protocol: Land the plane safely at the nearest available airport, and under no circumstances open the cockpit door. Those instructions become complicated when he looks at the monitor into the cabin, where the other hijackers are threatening to kill a hostage if he doesn’t let them in the cockpit.

Director Patrick Vollrath, making his feature debut, puts the viewer in the cockpit with Tobias, letting the natural claustrophobia caused by that dark, intense space do the work to create extreme tension. Working off a script he wrote with Senad Halilbasic, Vollrath makes even the mundane act of working dials on a jet console seem exciting.

Gordon-Levitt is tightly coiled here, perfect as a regular Joe who knows he has to keep his cool if he or his passengers have a chance to survive. Gordon-Levitt is particularly good in scenes with Omid Memar, who plays a naive young hijacker who Tobias thinks can be persuaded to surrender. The touches of humanity in those moments help elevate “7500” above the standard ticking-clock thriller.

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’7500’

★★★1/2

Debuting Friday, June 19, streaming on Prime Video. Rated R for violence/terror and language. Running time: 92 minutes; in English, and in German and Turkish, with subtitles.