The worst thing a director can do to a film is have a pedestrian plot with zero elements of surprise to it whatsoever. And this movie, sadly, did exactly just that.

It felt almost copy & pasted from other movies with practically identical plot-lines, aside from featuring the talented actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has quite the portfolio of movies behind him.

The plot was, needless to say, enough to drag the ratings down.

The writers chose an over-used and stereotypical idea: an airplane hijacking, with Muslim terrorists as the antagonist. It also included quite an expected ending, consisting of all of them dying and the main character, Tobias Ellis (Levitt) surviving (Shocker!) 

The flawed portrayals of the supposed ten years experienced pilot, and the stereotypes of Muslim terrorists ruined the chances of what maybe could’ve been a decent movie. 

While this would’ve been an excellent movie considering if it was portrayed after a real story, it is not. And the many reasons that the plotline was frequently remade was because of the multiple variations added to it to create what will become a unique movie that the audience likes.

‘7500’ has ended up with a flat story, with an unclear climax, an expected ending, and an abundance of unnecessary pounding for Ellis to open the door to the cockpit.

It gets frustrating to see one terrorist kill passengers while another repeatedly says to open the door for just about half an hour or even more. 

The flawed portrayals of Ellis, a pilot with ten years of experience up his sleeve starting at the age of 21, was brought to my attention from the straightforward reviews below.

“As I pilot, you have a number of defenses and countermeasures that you can put into motion, but no, you don’t sit by and manage the stick while marauders run freely through your aircraft killing crew and passengers… one of the bad guys gets in my cockpit, he’s dead… and the bad guy has incapacitated or killed my pilot or copilot, the bad guy doesn’t get another bite at the apple. He’s dead. Third, if I’m the last living pilot in the cockpit, I immediately belt in and mask up on oxygen. This copilot did none of those things, to safeguard his aircraft, crew, and passengers,” said Scott, a user on Amazon.  

Though I can’t speak on the behavior of the copilot being uninformed on such information, some moments did strike me as odd being that he did have ten years and most likely plenty of training beforehand. 

Stereotypes are incredibly harmful, especially for younger generations, and there are no reasons that movies should further reinforce them to the audience watching it.

With the lack of explanation behind the motives of the terrorists and only a random letter being read by one of the terrorists to the people on the other side of the microphone that this was a revenge for the Muslims to the Westerners. 

“Seemed like a thrilling movie at first, but I was disheartened by the negative Muslim stereotypes perpetuated by the movie by making the terrorists Muslim. Honestly, it shows a lack of creativity on the writers’ part” said Roshni Patel, a user on Amazon. 

Besides that, there was no exploration of the terrorists background or reasons and explanations behind why they attempted to hijack the plane.

“In a strange attempt to avoid being accused of over the top stereotyping, the most insane and out of control terrorist looked and acted like a far right German skinhead or soccer hooligan, yet he was supposed to also be Muslim. Weird. I wanted to know why he was there, but all I got was a ranting maniac” said Charles White, a user on Amazon.

Though it would be slightly unfair to list down the multiple cons to this movie without saying some pros, since there are still some in the very least.

It definitely holds some levels of intensity as a thriller with Levitt expressing his emotions well within the tiny cockpit of the airplane where the entire movie was shot. The inclusion of multiple languages including Turkish, German and various nationalities was also a nice touch to the film.

With this movie, 7500, which stands for unlawful interference as the emergency transponder code, it would more or less provide a new appreciation for pilots. As they hold the responsibility of many lives every time they go up in the air, with impactful decisions to make one after the other.

If you were to watch it, do expect the same phrase of “open the door!” about fifty times and the senseless murdering of the poor passenger and flight attendant that takes up half the movie.

To say the least, I do not recommend.