The Walk, staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a biographical film about a man who walked between the Twin Towers on a high-wire. The film shows everything leading up to the walk and the walk itself. It demonstrates the power that dreams have, no matter how impossible they seem.
Gordon-Levitt plays the role of Philippe Petit who dreams of walking between the Twin Towers. Petit dedicates 6 years of his life towards planning the walk. He has to figure out how to attach a wire on both towers and solve issues such as the interfering wind. Finally, Petit and his crew gain access to a tower and spend all night setting up the wire for Petit’s walk.
Gordon-Levitt does an outstanding job playing Petit, especially with his convincing French accent. Sadly, Petit is the only character successfully fleshed out and worth getting attached to because the other characters are portrayed blandly. Characters such as Annie, Petit’s love interest, do not complement the story but instead weigh the movie down.
The first two acts of the film are rather boring. The film spends too much time developing characters that are simply not as interesting as Petit. It eventually becomes a sort of waiting game for the actual walk to begin.
When the scene of the walk finally beings, the film roars with new life and more than compensates for the past two boring acts. The result is an extremely satisfying and suspenseful reenactment of the actual walk. The film being in IMAX 3D creates a whole new level of immersion that makes it seem as though the audience is on the wire with Petit.
The Walk is a difficult movie to describe because the first two acts are spent building up to the final, breathtaking act, which is the walk. However, the final 40 minutes alone are well worth the price of admission and viewing. The actual walk is unlike anything ever done in film and saves the movie from being something rotten into a must-watch in a scene where a man simply walks.
