7500 parents guide

7500 Parent Guide

Strong performances and a tense story make this a good thriller for fans of the genre.

Overall C+

Amazon Prime: On a flight from Berlin to Paris, pilot Tobias Ellis is expecting nothing more than the usual routine. But when a group of young men try to storm the cockpit, the flight becomes anything but routine.

Release date June 19, 2020

Violence C-
Sexual Content A
Profanity D
Substance Use A

Why is 7500 rated R? The MPAA rated 7500 R for violence/terror and language.

Run Time: 92 minutes

Parent Movie Review

On a routine flight from Berlin to Paris, First Officer Tobias Ellis (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has nothing more complex on his mind than the school he and his girlfriend, flight attendant Gokce (Aylin Tezel), want their son to attend. But when the flight attendant brings in their food for the flight, several passengers, armed with broken glass, storm the cockpit and try to take the plane. Although Tobias and the captain (Carlo Kitzlinger) repel the invaders, the captain is severely injured and Tobias sustains a deep cut on his arm. With the captain dazed and losing blood fast, Tobias is now solely responsible for the wellbeing of 85 passengers. But the hijackers are on the other side of the door…for now.

I feel like we’ve seen enough movies with Islamic terrorists. The market is saturated. It’s a trope, at this point, and it feels so cookie-cutter in almost every movie it crops up in that it tends to make me zone out. I know how the rest of the movie goes from there: the crazed zealotry, the ideological hatred of the West, and the random violence. But it just doesn’t feel as immediate as it did in 2001. We hit the same problem in the ‘80s when action movies reached what I call “Peak Russian”, and the Russian antagonist lost a lot of interest. They’re just interchangeable stand-ins for cultural bogeymen.

7500 has two advantages in this regard: Firstly, director Patrick Vollrath managed to differentiate the Islamic villains from one another. Vedat (Omid Memar) is young and unsure of both himself and the plan, where Kalkan (Passar Hariky) is much more resolute. Vedat even gets a character arc, which is almost unheard of in these kinds of movies. The other advantage is that this is a thriller, not just some souped-up star-spangled action flick where Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford storms through the plane with a sub-machine gun. As such, the characters have more opportunity to interact on a personal level – something more complex than staring down a rifle at one another.

The movie isn’t perfect, and the pacing can be a little inconsistent. But strong performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Omid Memar keep the story moving, and the comparably limited content concerns also aid the watchability. Sure, there’s a fair bit of profanity – but in my opinion, if you get stabbed with a broken whiskey bottle and realize that someone is hijacking the plane you’re on, you’re justified in a bit of cussing. The other concern is violence, and in this case it’s much cleaner than some films. A number of the killings happen off-screen, and in none of them does the camera linger, the way it does in something like The Last Days of American Crime. This isn’t gore-porn: the violence serves the plot, and the film doesn’t show much more than you need to see to get the idea. But for all the tension, violence, and personal horror, there is an interesting and surprisingly human story to be had here. I still wouldn’t recommend this as an in-flight movie…

Directed by Patrick Vollrath. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Aylin Tezel, and Carlo Kitzlinger. Running time: 92 minutes. Theatrical release June 19, 2020. Updated

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7500
Rating & Content Info

Why is 7500 rated R? 7500 is rated R by the MPAA for violence/terror and language.

Violence: Several people are stabbed or cut with improvised knives. People are beaten and kicked. A person is struck in the head with a fire extinguisher. An individual is shot in the chest. Several dead bodies are shown.
Sexual Content: None.
Profanity: There are 16 uses of extreme profanity and 12 uses of scatological cursing. There are also several uses of mild profanities and terms of deity.
Alcohol / Drug Use: None.

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7500 Parents' Guide

Depictions of Muslims in are often limited to roles as terrorists and villains in recent years. Meanwhile, Islamophobic violence and intimidation have risen sharply in recent years in North America. Do you think these negative depictions of a small minority of Muslims are a factor in these crimes? Do you personally know any individuals of the Islamic faith? What has their experience been?

 

Loved this movie? Try these books…

Hijacking has been a problem for a century. For a historical account of this criminal phenomenon, read Philip Baum’s Violence in the Skies: A History of Aircraft Hijacking and Bombing.

One of the most famous hijackings in the US took place in 1971. Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper by Geoffrey Gray tells the story of the one who got away.

When a flight from Tel Aviv was hijacked and forced to land in Uganda, the Israeli government decided to fight back. Saul David’s Operation Thunderbolt tells the story about the Israeli commando raid that responded to the hijacking.

Home Video

The most recent home video release of 7500 movie is June 19, 2020. Here are some details…

Related home video titles:

There are plenty of thrillers set on airplanes. Perhaps the best known is Air Force One, starring Harrison Ford as an unfortunate President who finds his official plane has been hijacked by Russian ultranationalists. A less violent thriller is Flightplan, starring Jodie Foster as she searches for her missing daughter on a jumbo jet – a child that some of the flight crew doubt even exists. Based on the true story of Captain Sullenberger, Sully tells the story of the Miracle on the Hudson and the subsequent investigation. United 93revisits the horror of 9/11 with a look inside the plane with the passengers who fought back.

Other hostage movies include Captain Phillips, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Firewall.