7500 – A Film with Sky-High Ambition

As many of you know, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s sparse appearances in film over the past handful of years has been due to his hard work on HitRecord, the collaborative project he put together and his new family. Because of this, he’s been limiting his performances to the ones that truly stand out, and 7500 certainly features one of them. Working in an enclosed space with extremely tense subject matter, the appeal to him makes sense – and Gordon-Levitt does a great job with it. In the end, there’s only so much that can be done with so little, but what this film still manages to achieve is, in fact, quite spectacular.

To begin, 7500 is quite the simple film – the logline says it all. That being said, it’s up to the performers and filmmakers to support that premise and for the most part, they do! The filming techniques stand out and do a great job at enhancing the film’s scale and atmosphere. Shot with a widescreen scope aspect ratio, undoubtedly an unconventional choice for a story that primarily takes place within such an enclosed space as an airplane, but it justifiably makes the film feel that much more claustrophobic. Meanwhile, the shot composition in general is also impressive, giving the film a blockbuster-ish feel despite its much lower budget. This fact, merged with the genius camera movements that truly take advantage of said space, makes the plot even more tense (without the small scale, it’s hard to say that this would’ve made me feel as physically ill (in a good way) as I did while viewing the film).

The acting in 7500 also impeccable, in the way that’s necessary for the film to work. The distress and sheer anxiety that comes with the moral dilemmas Gordon-Levitt’s character, Tobias Ellis, faces couldn’t have felt as emotionally compelling to the audience without him. The three actors that play the hijackers are also quite menacing. however, they can’t quite hold a candle to JGL, but they certainly help emphasize the chilling vibes.

While this film is arguably near perfect for roughly its first two thirds, a sudden change of direction and tone in the story felt dishonest towards what the rest of the film leading up to that part had originally promised. Until this point, the story is extremely captivating and borderline sickening, but the way the film tries to make the landing is unfortunately severely underwhelming, in a way that will make many wish it had just ended at that point. While this point may be hard to discuss without veering into spoiler territory, needless to say the way the film finally wraps up will inevitably be quite polarizing.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the 21st century greats, and it’s quite incredible that this is how he’s come back after his little hiatus. Besides a shaky third act, 7500 is a truly ambitious acting, editing and cinematography exercise that mostly pays off.

still courtesy of Amazon Studios

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