THE WALK (2015) ****

I wanted to see this in 3-D when it first came out because the trailer was so damned intense.  Sadly, it only lasted a week in theaters, so I never got a chance to see it on the big screen.  Even at home on my smallish Walmart TV, it’s hair-raising stuff.

The Walk is director Robert Zemeckis’ biopic version of the documentary Man on Wire.  It follows French daredevil Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who famously walked on a high wire in between the towers of The World Trade Center when it was still under construction in the mid-‘70s.  We see Petit work his way up from common street mime to dedicated tightrope walker.  When he sees a picture of the towers in a newspaper, he sets off on a mad quest to walk a hundred stories above New York City.

Zemeckis takes Petit’s tale and whittles it down to a story of following your dreams, no matter how crazy they seem.  Much of the film coasts on the charms of Gordon-Levitt’s performance, who spends most of his screen time directly addressing the audience.  This is a deft narrative device because it makes the audience feel like a co-conspirator on his scheme.

I loved Man on Wire, but The Walk affected me on a deeper level.  It’s truly an inspiring film that encourages you to follow whatever path you choose in life.  I really wish I saw it in the theater and in 3-D because Zemeckis knows how to throw a lot of stuff at the screen.  The depth of field stuff looks great too when Gordon-Levitt’s up on the wire looking down at the city below.  I can only imagine how it looked on the big screen.  As someone who is already afraid of heights, I probably would’ve been on the edge of my seat the whole last half-hour.