Review of The Walk (2015) by Campbell P — 01 Feb 2016

Before I found out The Walk was becoming a movie, I was always really fascinated with Philipe Petit's incredible true story of walking across the infamous World Trade towers. Does the film adaptation do it justice? Eh.

There were a lot of reasons to look forward to this movie. One, it's directed by Robert Zemeckis. Two, the trailer was great. And third, the source material is incredible. The film starts off horribly wrong and in my opinion, ruins every aspect of suspense in the film.

Narration. There's absolutely nothing wrong with narration in a movie, it's just that the whole point of the movie is that we don't know if he'll make it or not (if you don't know the source material) but that's all ruined.

He starts off by talking about his walk and introduces his background and that just demolished every sense of suspense I could've potentially had. There are redeeming qualities, however. The cast is really likable with talents like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, and newcomer Charlotte Le Bon.

I thought the cast had a lot of charisma and energy that saved this movie from being a disaster. The accents weren't as distracting as I thought they could be, but that doesn't deny the fact that I could tell they were fake.

The absolute best aspect of this film is its atmosphere. Every scene in Paris to even New York has a designated feeling to it. Thanks to the great score and settings, Paris looks absolutely beautiful and actually quirky.

The first half of The Walk felt very quirky and I'd say even Wes Anderson-ish. Then when they travel to New York, it feels grimy and kinda unsettling actually. Not that it's a bad thing, it's actually a good thing.

I love how Zemeckis was able to create two different tones throughout the film and that's not easy. The film kinda is separated into two separate goals however. The first half is kind of a cute romance story about Petit's origins as a poor boy in Paris and it was a nice way to start off the film.

Then when we meet most of the cast and the main plot line gets introduced, it becomes a heist film. Both sides of the film were enjoyable but again the narration kept a lot of suspense from being created.

When the walk on the rope actually happens, it's pretty exciting and has some good visuals as well. However, the problem is that it lasted way too long with too much talk and not enough do. There was too much talk from Petit and too much goofy things in between to make it enthralling in the least.

The visuals is actually something to be noted for. Before the walk actually happened, the special effects were kinda lame. There was a juggling scene that looked VERY mediocre and fake and that kinda sucked me out of what could've been a cool moment.

To finalize, was The Walk a good movie? Yeah it's fine, I don't think you NEED to see it. It's more of a TV movie if anything, but it has its moments. The Wall as a whole could've been a fun movie, but had all suspense sucked out of it when JGL started narrating his own story.

I can tell this is a better autobiography than a movie just because it's better told than shown. C+.