70
Compact, edge-of-the-seat storytelling that makes good use of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s decent, appealing everyman persona, 7500 may have its flaws but it still marks an impressive feature debut for Vollrath.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Barry Hertz
Gordon-Levitt, absent from the big screen since 2016′s "Snowden," oscillates nicely between maintaining an air of remarkable calm and then breaking down completely, and he pretends to know what all those airplane buttons do quite well.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Intended as a 90-minute nail-biter, the movie starts off strong but loses steam about halfway through and never quite recovers.
60
For its first half, 7500 is briskly effective in a cold-sweat sort of way, carrying its audience from a smooth takeoff to the first signs of disturbance to swiftly cranked all-out terror with the kind of nervy efficiency you can admire without exactly taking pleasure in it. In more ways than one, however, Vollrath’s technically adroit film has trouble sticking the landing.
58
The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi
Take it as a real-time thriller, an intelligently crafted study in cinematic minimalism, and 7500 works. The trouble starts when Vollrath’s feature debut (a follow-up to his 2015 Oscar-nominated short Everything Will Be Okay) attempts the landing.
75
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
7500 is, at heart, a chamber piece. The setting, the number of characters and the setup are all constrained in an elegant yet dramatically effective way that belies the film’s low budget. There’s a taut, piano wire-like quality to its simplicity: None of the drama comes from action-movie cliches, but rather from the actors, along with the disembodied voices of an air traffic controller, a police officer and others.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
This is one well-made thriller, and for a director who wants to work in that genre, this is as strong a first feature as any filmmaker could hope for.
50
Convenient plot twists undermine its early pretense that it’s aiming for something other than to exploit our deepest, most regressive fears.
50
Despite the clever setup for this (almost) single-setting B-movie, some half-baked plotting and unfortunate stereotyping keep 7500 grounded.
50
The A.V. Club by Shannon Miller
Just as Tobias can’t escape the tragedy unfolding just beyond the cockpit door, 7500 struggles to overcome some unfortunate and very outdated optics.