'The Walk' Movie Review: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Takes on Philippe Petit

— -- Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Rated PG

Four out of five stars

The Oscar-winning 2008 documentary film "Man on Wire" is such an enthralling, well-constructed telling of French daredevil Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the World Trade Center’s twin towers, the idea of anyone making a narrative film about that spectacular feat seemed to me at first superfluous. Putting it in the hands of director Robert Zemeckis and having Joseph Gordon-Levitt play the colorful, slight Petit made the prospect slightly more intriguing.

Let’s just say, I grossly underestimated the possibilities.

As a matter of record, on Aug. 7, 1974, a week before his 25th birthday, Petit and some “co-conspirators” sneaked up the recently erected towers, worked all night to fashion a tightrope and, at approximately 7 a.m. as the streets below started to fill with people, Petit stepped onto a steel wire one-inch wide and spent the next 45 minutes walking back and forth along the 140-foot length between the twin towers, 110 stories above the asphalt streets below, all without a safety net or harness.

To introduce us to Petit and his story, Zemeckis and co-writer Christopher Browne put Gordon-Levitt in the Statue of Liberty’s torch, with the twin towers glistening in the background. For anyone who feels sentimental about the towers, it’s a beautiful, albeit obviously manufactured view that’s largely unnecessary. It’s also a close-up of our star in considerable makeup and even, perhaps, a bit of digital manipulation to make him look almost exactly like a young Petit.

Until we get to the actual walk, the film vacillates between Petit’s consuming passion to accomplish his goal, and the storytelling device of Petit perched on the torch narrating the action, which dampens the tension and undermines the drama. "Man on Wire" does a much better job of building the suspense leading up to the walk. However, it doesn’t really put you on the wire with Petit.

"The Walk" does, and it’s a cinematic miracle. The simple fact is, no human other than Petit has ever occupied that particular space between those two special buildings, and Zemeckis puts us there. It is, perhaps, the best use of 3D IMAX technology I’ve ever seen.

This is the part where I encourage everybody on the planet to see "The Walk." This is also the part where I tell you Zemeckis and Browne get overzealously cute with their script and storytelling. But the combination of their jaw-dropping recreation of the twin towers, Petit’s walk between those towers, and the power of the story itself easily overcomes the cartoonish narrative. And yet "The Walk" is also deeply satisfying, almost like a love story. Very much a love story, in fact -- an inspiring and thrilling love story between a man and two buildings that are, quite literally, the objects of his very particular and unique desire.

Petit’s love and reverence for those towers is palpable, more so to anyone who lived and grew up in the New York City area between 1974 and Sept. 11, 2001. "The Walk," encompassing all the magical elements cinema has to offer, serves as a gorgeous tribute to those buildings loved, admired and missed by so many.