Cast: This is a pretty unsuspecting cast. There's Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a little bit of Ben Kingsley. After that, John Ralphio from Parks and Rec. (Ben Schwartz) is the next most recognizable person. It struck me as odd that they didn't aim a little higher in recognizability with the casting.
Plot: Philippe Petit is a Parisian tightrope walker. In the mid 1970s, he decides to do a walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. This is his story.
Thoughts:
There is exactly one reason to see this movie and it should come as no surprise that the reason is “the walk”. I wanted to see this on the biggest screen I could find (sadly, I had to settle for the very underwhelming Louisville IMAX option) and soak it in. That part of the movie is done every bit as well as I could want. I felt the height the whole time, and even though this is a 40 year old story, I still worried the whole time that he would fall (We live in a post Inglourious Basterds world after all). If you are seeing this movie, it's for that walk and it is worth it.
The other big takeaway from the movie was that it's a nice memorial for the Twin Towers. It's sort of the story of their birth. The movie reminds the audience that they were initially disliked by people, seen as eyesores. This walk helped to legitimize them, gave them a history. Then, the movie never gets to 9/11 (much appreciated). One thing Petit makes clear from the very beginning of the movie is that he never says “death” when talking about a walk, and the towers are given the same treatment. The closing lines are a little on a nose, but more touching than anything in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or World Trade Center.
I won't even save this as my Elephant: You just have to accept that Joseph Gordon Levitt is using that accent. It sounds over the top, even if you do realize that Petit actually sounds like that. It's a solid performance otherwise. The supporting cast is fine too. They are mostly just impressions of the real people involved, which is fine.
Everyone is a means to an end: the end being the walk. The first half of the movie isn't bad. It's filler though. If the movie could be released as a 30 minute wire walk, that would've maybe been better. That isn't how the business works though.
Elephant in the Room: How does it compare to Man on Wire? The Walk is more impressive. Man on Wire tells a better story. It's as simple as that. You watch the documentary if you want to hear an amazing story about how a man actually walked on a wire, a hundred floors high and survived. You watch The Walk if you want to feel like you did the walk.
To Sum Things Up:
Haven't I made this clear? There's a really cool tightrope walk sequence that is worth seeing on the big screen. The other hour of the movie is fine and forgettable.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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