The Walk (2015)

[arc]

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Christopher Browne. The film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Charlotte Le Bon, Clément Sibomy, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, and Ben Kingsley

 

Released: Sept 30, 2015.

 

This is the biopic version of Philippe Petit's tightrope walk across the span between the tops of the Twin Towers.  JGL's accent is mostly passable. There's an almost comical amount of "hey, let's speak in English" among the French characters, though mostly it's because Petit wants to pull off this stunt in America and so he realized he needed to practice his English.  You may remember this from Petit's book, or from news accounts of the event itself, or from the documentary "Man on Wire (2008)".

 

Anyways, considered as a heist (Petit and co had to break in to both towers; it was totally unauthorized and illegal) it's decent but not great.  But the walk itself is spectacular and I thought seeing it in 3D was well worth it.  BTW, I would actually argue that you should see it in a system that lets you tilt your head without losing the 3D; IMAX 3D doesn't.

 

To me, the biopic version is feels a little more glib (and thus, probably less honest) than the documentary, esp in the final minutes.  In the doc, his co-conspirators honestly felt more worried for Petit - in retrospect, and knowing he had survived - than in the biopic.  And more, there was a much greater sense of loss afterwards in the doc, that the friendships were essentially ended along with the walk itself, and that doesn't really come across in the biopic at all. And of course there's the rather ridiculous framing device of having JGL as Petit narrate the thing from the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

 

But really, the visuals of the walk itself are extraordinary and worth the ticket price alone.

[wlk68]

I wanted to like this more than I did. JGL's French accent was a tad distracting and the constant cutaways to him narrating from the Statue of Liberty kept pulling me out of the story. Using a straight voice over would've been a better choice, IMO. I also found the fake blue contact lenses he wore equally distracting. So what if Petit's eyes were blue and JGL's are brown? I wouldn't have known or cared except for the very obvious (and ham-fisted) attempt to change JGL's eye color.

 

All that being said, the sneaking in, setting up and actual walk were stunning and nerve wracking. I knew it was a true story and that he didn't fall but that didn't stop me from gasping out loud a few times or watching from between my fingers.   

 

I found myself getting choked up at the final scene when he commented that his pass to the observation deck didn't have an expiration date, it just said 'forever'. And then the closing shot of the towers. Very poignant.

 

ETA: I just Googled the real Phillipe Petit and it turns out he was a ginger. They left JGL's hair brown which makes the whole eye color thing even more puzzling to me.

Edited October 12, 2015 by wlk68

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I saw the movie with my JGL-fan friend and she was convinced they had very slightly reddened up his hair. If they did, it was barely noticeable at all.

 

I don't actually know almost anyone's eye color (friends nor celebs) unless they're really extraordinarily blue, so I didn't notice the contacts at all.

[meep.meep]

Do they drop the wire?

Man on Wire is one of my favorite movies, the one I always recommend to people.

[wlk68]

I saw the movie with my JGL-fan friend and she was convinced they had very slightly reddened up his hair. If they did, it was barely noticeable at all.

 

I don't actually know almost anyone's eye color (friends nor celebs) unless they're really extraordinarily blue, so I didn't notice the contacts at all.

After the fact, I looked at stills from the movie online and his hair does look dark red. That being said, it looked 100% brown while I was sitting in the theater. As for the eyes, there appeared to be a weird blue ring around the rim of the pupils. Once I noticed it, I couldn't unsee it and it drove me bat-crap crazy. 

Edited October 14, 2015 by wlk68

[ketchuplover]

In my version he gets bit by a radioactive spider just before the wire breaks close to one of the buildings.  He swings on the falling wire until the very end when he transforms fully into Spider-Man

[vavera4ka]

I found myself getting choked up at the final scene when he commented that his pass to the observation deck didn't have an expiration date, it just said 'forever'. And then the closing shot of the towers. Very poignant.

"Forever" got to me too.

I know few of my friends were getting misty eyed while looking a the towers. I was fighting to put anger in the back of my mind, cause every shot of the side of the building brought that awful photo of a man falling head first to my mind. F#CK YOU, bastards who decided that flying a plane into a building is a good idea.