Director: Patrick Vollrath
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Running Time: 92 minutes
Synopsis: On a Berlin to Paris nighttime flight, Tobias Ellis (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is the First Officer while his partner Gökce (Aylin Tezel) is one of the flight attendants. Once airborne, murderous hijackers storm the cockpit and incapacitate the Captain (Carlo Kitzlinger), but the injured Tobias regains control and locks the hijackers out of the flight deck. As he struggles to land the plane and keep the passengers safe, he notices that 18-year-old hijacker Vedat (Omid Memar) may not be as fanatical as his colleagues.
What Works Well: German director Patrick Vollrath's feature film debut is almost entirely set in the cockpit and unfolds in close-to-real-time, resulting in a tense, claustrophobic, and effective thriller. Focusing on realism, the human actions are filled with missteps, injuries matter, heroism is accidental, and routine movements like pulling levers or using microphones are hampered by pain or lack of knowledge. The interactions between Tobias and Vedat reveal a complex web of emotions within panic, anchored by a level-headed Joseph Gordon-Levitt performance.
What Does Not Work As Well: The film's strengths are also its limitations: nothing matters beyond the confines of the cockpit; and in striving for authenticity, repetition and prolongation creep in.
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