Directed by first-timer Patrick Vollrath, “7500” debuted last year at the Locarno Film Festival, and arrives Thursday on Amazon Prime. It’s a plane hijacking thriller, of the sort we’ve seen in everything from “Air Force One“ to “United 93” to “Snakes on a Plane,” but with a key difference: The film, running for just over 90 minutes, is told virtually in real time, and camera almost never leaves the plane’s cockpit.

There are phone calls, and occasionally we see things happen in the cabin via a monitor, but for the most part we stick with that one location. It’s a hard thing to pull off, sort of similar to the film “Locke,” with Tom Hardy, in which the entire film follows a character throughout one car ride. But “7500”—the title comes from the code for a plane hijacking—not only remains exciting, but it keeps the tension up for its entire running time.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as first officer Tobias Ellis, an American expat in Germany, where he lives with his flight attendant girlfriend and young son. He’s introduced getting into the cockpit along with veteran pilot Michael Lutzmann (Carlo Kitzlinger.) The plane takes off, on a flight from Berlin to Paris, and before long a pair of terrorists attempt to hijack the plane.

This part is the most interesting aspect of the movie. In just about every hijacking scenario, fictional or in real life, the hijackers manage to take control of the plane immediately. In 7500, that doesn’t happen immediately, and so it wrings tension, for a surprisingly long part of the running time, out of who will control the plane, while there are hostage situations as well.

While not featuring much in the way of special effects or stunts, 7500 is very much an action thriller, and makes creative use of the small space in several tense fighting sequences. The film also features handheld photography, while avoiding the sort of shaky cam likely to induce stomach aches in much of the audience.

As for the terrorists, they’re established as Turkish Muslims, although the film doesn’t make especially clear what their specific political cause is. However, it does show before long that one of them is the ringleader while the other is just along for the ride.

“7500” is a very international project. While the leading man is American, it’s directed by a German, set aboard a plane heading from Berlin to Paris, and it was shot in Germany and Austria. This week, it has a chance to emerge as a sleeper hit on Amazon.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: IMDB, 7500, Amazon Prime