The Walk
3 Waffles!

While The Walk might not be the greatest movie ever, it does contain one of the great movie moments. It is one you want to see on the big screen.

Based on the true story, Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Philippe Petit – a French artist and street performer driven by ambition and his love of art to do something stunning. It’s 1974 and, while reading a magazine, Philippe believes divine inspiration has shined down upon him and given him his task.

Philippe wants to travel to New York and walk a tightrope between the twin towers of the newly constructed World Trade Center.

Can he pull off the impossible and illegal act?

When focused on being a caper film, The Walk is entertaining and exciting. It’s fun to watch Philippe with his rag tag, motley crew of co-conspirators planning and plotting how to get into the buildings, haul all of the heavy duty equipment to the top floor and string the wire between the two towers. I wish writer/director Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Christopher Brown gave us a more detailed overview, but this gang of thieves become goofy, endearing characters you root for, even though what they are doing is illegal and could lead to Philippe’s painful death.

Zemeckis knows how to get the audience on the edge of their seats with several close calls and plenty of reminders how dangerous the entire endeavor can be, but loses us a bit with a realistic portrayal of Petit that might have been too real.

He intersperses all of these sillier, lighthearted moments to show us Phillippe’s egotistical and obsessive side, which cuts into our caper scenes, and makes him a bit harder to love. Even though he might be displaying an annoyingly rough French accent (which kind of grows on you), Gordon-Leavitt does a great job making our highwire artist prickly and full of dreams of grandeur, but also shows an ugly side many won’t want to see. It might be real, but does it fit this feel good, inspirational movie?

However, you and I are both seeing The Walk for the massive visual spectacle you hope and dream it will be. On the big screen (I saw it in IMAX), the moment you have been anticipating, the walk, is shocking and spectacular.

Zemeckis and his creative team make you feel like you are on top of those towers, walking that wire and looking down on the tiny streets of New York below. These scenes are just as amazing as when Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are floating around in space during Gravity, or when Batman looks down upon the city from a perch on top of a skyscraper in The Dark Knight.

It is heart stopping when Philippe walks across the wire, looks down, and starts to perform. Even for someone like me who knows the story, you feel an urgency and fear as he tempts death and fate.

You may have heard the stories about people becoming physically ill because they may have a fear of heights or some discomfort at how real it all seems to be, and, I have to admit, someone in my theater did get ill. It’s that real.

Zemeckis could have spent less time devoted to Philippe’s early life, and given us more of what we came to see – THE WALK!!!!!

The Walk is rated PG for thematic elements involving perilous situations, and for some nudity, language, brief drug references and smoking.