Review of The Walk (2015) by Harry W — 17 Jul 2016

Based on one of the most impressive feats in stunt history and featuring a talented combination of director and actor, The Walk sounded like a potentially engaging experience.

I never would have thought that there would be enough history behind Phillippe Petit's walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center to actually churn out a feature-length film worth of material. But since Robert Zemeckis was back at the director's chair I knew that there was going to be a way for the man to make it work. With the addition of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the leading role, I felt certain that this was possible. My belief proved to be accurate as there ended up being far more of the story than I could have predicted.

One of Robert Zemeckis' tactics to keep The Walk engaging is to keep the story consistently moving along at a breezy pace. Rather than following the structure of a typical biopic with tedious side characters and sentimentalities, The Walk plays out in essentially three acts. It begins very much like a fantasy, depicting the background of Phillippe Petit and his transition into the art of tightrope walking. The story cuts between all the key points in his life as Joseph Gordon-Levitt narrates everything, telling the story to audiences with a concise and realistic description. Instead of voice-over narration, The Walk uses an alternative method of story contextualization. It has Phillippe Petit narrating his story by telling it directly to viewers by breaking the fourth wall. He does it in a separate section to the narrative as not to detract from the realism of the central story, and it provides a first-person perspective of the man's state of mind and passionate love of his performance art without seeming generic. The Walk is focused far more on the titular stunt known as "le coup" than on the actual nature of the man who accomplished it so characterization is not the strongest point of the narrative, but Robert Zemeckis spends little time playing around with that. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance is left to do the duties of that while Robert Zemeckis focuses predominantly on what it is to be a member of his profession. The story examines where the man's passion comes from and what kind of relentless mental and physical dedication one must tame themselves with to truly find success in the art. As a film about tightrope walking in general, The Walk is a testament to the talents of its performers and the extensive amount of training and planning that goes into every performance which idolizes Phillippe Petit without forgetting to humanize him.

The second act is the most dominant one: the depiction of Phillippe Petit planning and setting up le coup. Since planning a huge-scale stunt on top of the World Trade Center took an endless amount of precise detail and sneaking around to execute, Robert Zemeckis ensures that he captures it all with extensive detail. This part of the film goes on for a long time but it is held aloft by the caper themes that it brings to the narrative. Everything moves along at a breezy pace while the jazz theme of the musical score captures the seedy nature of the characters' actions with smooth energy. There is a nice flow to these scenes and they are kept in good spirits by the gentle touch of humour, and it serves as an effective leadup to the climactic depiction of the titular feat.

The third act of The Walk is a testament to Robert Zemeckis' stylish talents as a filmmaker. His status as a visual mastermind is one audiences have been aware of for years, and in The Walk we see him bring those talents along to a simple drama feature with a relatively low budget. Through using actual practical stunts combined with supportive visual effects, The Walk depicts its many stunts with visual precision. The grand finale of them all is the finest as it should be, and it fuses quality visual effects with the brilliant cinematography work of Dariusz Wolski. The entire film is shot with a beautiful eye for detail that brings out the grace of the scenery and makes everything atmospheric whether its intentions are to depict the surreal imagination of its main character or the intense nature of his stunts. The Walk is always a great-looking feature, and it even makes an effective use of 3D which is a gimmick films rarely embrace with any sensibility. Anyone with a general awareness of the history behind Phillippe Petit's magnificent feat knows that he successfully completed the titular walk and survived it, and as a result the film is at risk of losing intensity surrounding the mystery of if he achieved the distinctive stunt. With Robert Zemeckis maintaining a tenacious focus on an intense visual style while supported by the brilliance of Alan Silvestri's musical score, the film is rich on atmosphere for its visual and auditory assets.

And to top it all off, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a perfect portrait of Phillippe Petit. As a large fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, his presence in The Walk was a key factor in influencing my decision to view the film. However, I expected that I would appreciate his presence more than I would believe him as a Parisian. In actual fact, the man spearheaded both initiatives. From first glance in The Walk, audiences look into Joseph Gordon-Levitt's blue eyes and hear a flawless Parisian accent which displays him in form like none other. He is separated from his standard charming self by a grand distance and in a deep trance of becoming Phillippe Petit, capturing the mad brilliance of the man with a perfect passion for the material. Joseph Gordon-Levitt captures a perfect sense of relentless determination for the character and speaks with flawless voice articulation, grasping the quick-wit of the man with as much perfect accuracy as his Parisian accent and fluent knowledge of the French language. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance more than compensates for the shortage of characterization in the film's screenplay, and his actual work with the real Phillippe Petit on learning to walk a tightrope with such incredible precision is remarkable. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's physical dedication to The Walk turns his leading role into one of true performance art, so it is surely one of the finest performances in his career.

Ben Kinglsey also lends a strong supporting performance, bringing a sense of wisdom along with him and culminating a strong chemistry with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Charlotte Le Bon also supplies an intense supporting effort, and James Badge Dale has a distinctively charming sense of humour about him.

The Walk isn't the strongest in the area of characterization, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt's remarkable performance captures a perfect portrait of Phillippe Petit while the directorial genius of Robert Zemeckis keeps the story surrounding his remarkable achievement entertaining with rich energy, a breezy pace and tenacious imagery.