Monday, December 28, 2020

‘7500’ 2020

      The Emergency Code for a plane hijacking is 7500.  This is an intense thriller and told from the cockpit of a flight from Berlin to Paris.  It begins with the everyday routine in the cockpit of an Airbus A319.  Co-pilot Tobias Ellis is preparing the plane for take-off and this procedure is without incident.  Then, we hear shouting in the passenger cabin.  A group of young men try and storm the cockpit and among them is 18-year old Vedat.  A fight begins between the crew and the attackers.  There is the desire on the one hand to save individual lives and on the other hand to avert an even bigger catastrophe.  The cockpit door becomes a battleground and Tobias ends up being the arbiter over life and death. 


     Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in the role of copilot on a hijacked flight from Berlin to Paris.  An Islamist terrorist enters the cockpit and Levitt is stabbed in the left arm.  The hijackers made knives from glass wrapped with duct tape because the metal detectors would have sensed a metal object.  There are two hijackers outside the cockpit and they are constantly banging on the door to try to force it open?  There are 85 passengers, two pilots and the flight attendants.  Another complication is that one of the flight attendants is the girlfriend and mother of the cop-pilot’s child!!  
     
     I found the constant banging on the cockpit door to be very annoying!!  The next tactic by the hijackers is to have Russian Roulette with the passengers!!  I knew that would be their next step because their goal is to get into the cockpit!!  The co-pilot has contacted air traffic control and they have cautioned  him
repeatedly that he must not open the cockpit door no matter what the hijackers say or threaten to do!!  The tension is ratcheting up both for the people in the film and the viewers too.
 
    This is an adult movie and not for any
teens of any age or younger children!!  There is intense violence with lots of stabbing, fighting, struggling, kicking and grappling.   Plus, there are bloody wounds and lots of blood.  Characters die and one is shot.  Characters are bashed with fire extinguishers, kicked in the head and smashed with doors.  Language is strong, there's some flirting and a kiss.  The movie is very tense and gripping but also shocking and unsettling.  Death has meaning here and it's an experience that mature viewers won't soon forget.  I found this film to be way up on the intense scale and I could see where it was leading.  As a result, I must give this film a lower rating even though the plot and acting are very good.  2* (I didn’t like this movie)      

93 min, Action directed and written by Patrick Vollrath and also written by Senad Halibasic with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Omid Memar, Aylin Tezel, Carlo Kitzlinger, Murathan Muslu, Aurelie Thepaut, Paul Wollin, Hicham Sebiai, Cornel Nussbaum, Passar Hariky, Denis Schmidt, Christoph Wielinger, Max Schimmelpfennig, Anna Suk Marie Klischies.

Note:  Imdb 6.3* out of 10* withRollingStone 2 1/2* out of 5* Peter Travers, Rotten Tomatoes 70% with 149 critics 52% with 398 audience scores, Metacritic 58 out of 100 with 23 critics 6.1 out of 10 with 29 ratings, RollingStone 2 1/1* out of 5* Peter Travers. Common Sense Media Jeffrey M. Anderson, 4* out of 5*, age 15+, 1* sex, 2* positive messages and role models, 4* violence, language, Roger Ebert 2* Brian Tallerico, The Guardian 3* out of 5* Mark Kermode.

Special Note:  The director wanted a hyper realistic atmosphere to the film.  Rather than directing his actors on technical details like where to sit, stand, or move for the best shot or lighting, he allowed them to improvise.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt said it was brutal and challenging at times but it let him truly immerse himself in his character.  This movie was not filmed on a set or with set pieces, it was shot on a real plane that the production company bought.  Carlo Kitzlinger, who played the captain of the plane, is actually a real pilot and he flew for Lufthansa Airlines for many years.  He assisted Joseph Gordon-Levitt with becoming a pilot for the role.  The film's title alludes to squawk code 7500.  In the event of a hijacking, the pilot inputs (squawks) the code into the transponder.  This is an onboard electronic device used to identify the aircraft on air traffic control (ATC) radar monitoring systems.  Squawk code 7500 silently alerts ATC of the situation without the hijacker's knowledge.

Mistakes:  When Tobias is talking to Vedat (a highjacker), Tobias has a single tear roll down his cheek out of the corner of his right eye.  In the next shot and subsequent ones, his cheek is dry?  When landing the airplane, the altimeter shows 1000 feet, however the radar altimeter shows  2400 feet.  A radar altimeter shows exactly how close to the ground you are while the altimeter shows how many feet above sea level the airplane is flying.  In the beginning of the film, when they show all of the security camera footage from the airport, in the lower left-hand corner it is labelled as "BERLIN AIRPORT".  Since this is a German airport, the security system would most likely be set up in German or even as bilingual?

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