This is what we’re doing now? We’re just making movies about over-indulged jerks? “I wanna climb the twin towers.” “I wanna scale Everest.” “I wanna take a riding crop to a naked coed.” Dreams used to be a little bigger and a little more altruistic. Give me something else or I walk.
No? Fine. [small voice]Jerk.[/small voice] The Walk is a 180º rotation of the last Robert Zemeckis film, Flight. In Flight, Bobby Z explored the egocentric antics of airline pilot Riding Crop Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington); the film sold Itself on an unbelieveable upside-down aviation sequence in the first twenty minutes. In The Walk, Zemeckis explores the egocentric antics of high-wire artist Philippe “Li’l Riding Crop” Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); the film sells itself on unbelievable right-side up aviation artistry in the last twenty minutes. I found both of the men tough to take, but both of the key sequences worth the admission price alone. The CGI recreations of JGL walking a wire between the top of the World Trade Center towers may well be the best moments on screen in 2015.
Unfortunately, there was more film than these moments. And Phillippe is the kind of guy you kinda want to punch in the face. We can tell this from his early days when, as a street performer, he has a zero tolerance rule for on-lookers who trod even one toe into his magic circle. While Magic Phil doesn’t have firm grasp on concepts like education, humility or self-control, he seems to have a good grasp on upstaging, one-sided relationships and pursuing selfish personal goals no matter how unrealistic.
And, one day, he finds the mother of all goals – walking a high wire between the soon-to-be-completed World Trade Center towers. The French accented Joseph Gordon-Levitt drawing a straight line on a piece of paper and calling it a goal is one of the silliest things you’ll see all year. Let me demonstrate.
Hey, le blog grenouille patrons, zis eez my new life goal:
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You are inspired now, oui?
Anyway, with training from Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley) and a small army of nameless sabateurs, Phil is ready to take on Manhattan. The majority of this film is about the preparation for these antics. At one point,
however, his conspirators realize that Phillippe is probably insane. More could have been mined (“mimed?”) from this revelation.
In a way, The Walk is precisely why we go to the movies – this is the ultimate escape: something amazing in a venue that no longer exists, a venue that time took away but cinema has resurrected. There are the twin towers again, magnificent and gaudy, prisitine, elephantine and surreal, just as they dominated the Manhattan skyline for three decades. And here is a tale about those towers in their infancy, long before they would become old hat and much longer still before we would see the end of them. Here is history on screen, as close to reality as current technology allows; the illusion is brilliant. And just like Everest made me believe that selfish thrill seekers really scaled the world’s tallest mountain in front of my disbelieving eyes, so, too, did The Walk make me believe one obnoxious Frenchy waded the air between the world’s tallest buldings, 140 stories up. Well done, or make that, “Félicitations!”
♪Here comes Joey up many a story
Hand him now a black crew neck
Here comes Joey threatening death gory
“Because, hey, what the heck?”
He got a clipping, he got a long pole
Yeah, the boy can prance
Interaction suspenseful
Turning a short stroll into a dance
He do the thing where he salutes his gawkers
He do the thing where salutes the cloud
He do the walk
He do the walk up high
He do the walk up high♫
Rated PG, 123 Minutes
D: Robert Zemeckis
W: Robert Zemeckis & Christopher Browne
Genre: Stuff you’d post on youtube
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Acrobats
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Acrophobes
♪ Parody inspired by “Walk of Life”
