The Walk - Review (9/10)

When you get a master storyteller like Robert Zemeckis, you are in for a treat. And when Zemeckis is inspired, get ready to be moved.

Based off the book by Philippe Petit, To Reach The Clouds, which the 2008 documentary Man On Wire was also based off of; Joseph Gordon-Levitt transforms himself and became Petit. And he came with a believable French accent.

The first time I saw the first trailer for The Walk, I was blown away. And I remember I said to myself, I have to watch this on IMAX because even from the trailer you could see Zemeckis was going to work some magic with the wire-walking across the Twin Towers.

And as opportunity would have it, I am now in Manila where The Wire has just opened this week on IMAX cinemas.

The visuals as I suspected were incredible. Especially when Gordon-Levitt took his first step off the ledge and onto the wire, you could almost feel the sense of height or depth, or "the void" as his character would call it. I'm not sure what it would look on a small screen but I may find out soon enough when it opens in Brunei later this year.

Zemeckis has also created a beautiful back story and let us understand who Petit is. Not only that, but this was also a heist movie, where a group of accomplices had to be recruited in order to sneak into the Twin Towers just before it was opened.

There were great performances from Charlotte Le Bon, Clement Sibony and Ben Kingsley. The only ones that looked like they didn't fit into the movie was Ben Schwartz and Benedict Samuel. I'm not sure if their characters were based off of real people that Petit met or was just created for some very minor comic relief. But they were the only ones that didn't work.

I don't know how much of the movie was fiction created for the benefit of entertainment, so a few parts I felt were slightly overly dramatised, like the one with the guard at one of the towers. But I was still entertained and ate up everything I saw onscreen.

Towards the end, there were a few lines that really moved me and this was credit to Zemeckis for his direction and co-writing the screenplay. Because the Twin Towers are no longer with us, Zemeckis really pulled at our heartstrings when he got Le Bon to say Petit breathed life and soul into the towers.

Also, with Gordon-Levitt's Oscar-worthy performance book-ending the movie, his final word, "forever", just crushed me. A love letter to the Twin Towers, this is a movie that's worth a second viewing.