Review of The Walk (2015) by Luther G — 12 Oct 2015

The more I think about this movie, the more it affects me. In and of itself, the movie is a very satisfactory 3D production, with competent performances from a good cast, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt turning in a genial performance with a consistent (if questionable) French accent. The movie's storyline is that of a simple innocent caper, where the stakes are not that high (no pun intended).

But underneath the simplicity of this movie is an ache that is of an innocence lost, a time where movies about Frenchmen could be made by having your cast speak English with a French accent. It's a time where something illegal involving the Twin Towers was not about its destruction, but about bringing attention to its engineering. It's about a time where the crimes involved to pull off a stunt like this would be treated with slaps on the wrist instead of waterboarding or rendition. It's about a time where America was still seen as a land of opportunity and not a land under constant threat.

This movie will be more affecting for people who knew of the Twin Towers and experienced their loss; I am not sure how this ache can be explained to people born after 9/11. For those people, this movie may seem a little too simplistic, naive, and unrealistic. For the rest of us, it's precisely those reasons why we sometimes miss the 20th Century.