The
Walk
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.
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