The Walk

The Walk

This movie is ridiculous. It is not really a movie but a documentary masquerading as a movie. Philippe Petit, as played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, narrated the whole movie. In some shots he stands atop the Statue of Liberty’s torch with the Towers as background looking directly at the camera and addressing the audience.

This film has two gimmicks. The first is getting you to spend $21.00 the 3D version of the movie so you can experience all the special effects. The other is to try to induce vertigo from the high wire shots at the top of the towers. This is all done with green screens on sound lots. The effects are good but you know they are simply looking at graphics.

The movie is a biopic about Philippe Petit. Gordon-Levitt plays him like a strutting French cock with kinetic energy looking for the next challenge/high.  He is an e self-promoting egotist. He has no redeeming value and seeks only notoriety. He has an annoying French accent and wears a fright wig. There is nothing appealing about his character, the walk is solely for him.

Ben Kingsley is a father figure and mentor who gives him valuable advice about walking the wire. He has a generic east European accent which Sir Kingsley delivers flawlessly. Charlotte Le Bon is the love interest. She is lovely and she did the role well.

The center piece of the movie is the walk. Gordon-Levitt narrates every step as if he was broadcasting from some news desk. Every leathery foot step is magnified on the screen and the steel wire jutes out in 3D over the audience’s heads. The realism of the shoots from the top of the towers can cause vertigo (fear not, I was fine).

One big plus of the movie is nostalgia. It was great to see the towers in their glory. The walk was done in August 1974 so the Towers were not finished. How he and his crew got to the roof is extraordinary. I am certain these events are true, but this was such an innocent period before our world fell apart on 9 11.

A very strange movie, I cannot recommend it.