Preface

• Man the second half of this movie was really impressive!
  • And the first half was really not…
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s French accent was good though. Didn’t see that coming!

Premise

• The Walk is the newest movie from Back to the Future and Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis, and it stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit.
• Petit is a famous high-wire artist who ACTUALLY walked between the two Twin Towers in 1974.
• There was a documentary done about the same topic some time ago, but now it gets a cinematic treatment!

Review

• That preface may have sounded kinda mocking, but it is a pretty good summary of what this review will cover.
• Usually I like to start with the positives, but since this movie doesn’t, I won’t!
• So from the first shot of the movie you immediately think: is this gonna get better?
  • Don’t worry, it does!
• Petit (for instance) is introduced in the first shot of the movie as the narrator, and they keep cutting back to future-Petit who tells the audience what’s going on.
• My problem with the movie overall, specifically the first half, is that it felt very flimsy and extremely average.
• Having that constant narration just made the movie feel more vanilla, and it didn’t really make anything in it feel all that special.
• They did establish Petit pretty well and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was really good in the role.
  • You really get used to the French accent pretty quickly.
• Speaking of good in the movie, Charlotte Le Bon plays his love interest and I liked the two of them together, they had good chemistry.
  • She would slip in and out of her accent, which I noticed a few times, but she was really good in the movie overall.
• Ben Kingsley was in the movie too, which I didn’t know going in. And his character is a very small part that probably only existed to be filled by a big-name actor who could sell seats. Hence: Ben Kingsley.
• So the actors were good in the movie, they just felt very awkward while everything was being set up.
• During the awkward narrations at the beginning, it’s setting up how Petit got into high-wiring and how it’s his passion.
• I wish we learned more about the “passion” aspect and less about the background.
• Basically, from the point he meets his girlfriend onward is good for the movie, but anything before that felt unnecessarily.
• It was almost as if the movie wasn’t sure if it was gonna be a Philippe Petit biopic or a historical movie based around just this one event, so it tried to do both.
• But that second part was executed REALLY well.
• When they’re setting up for the high-wire performance, and then the performance is actually going down… Those are shot and directed fantastically.
• Robert Zemeckis really used CGI to his best effect in those scenes and you really feel like you’re the one up on that wire, which is pretty terrifying.

In Conclusion

• Wow, short review…
• In Conclusion guys, The Walk was a decent movie with good performances, well-executed second and third acts, but a really bad setup.
• Other than the effects, there wasn’t too much outstanding to it either. Like I don’t feel compelled to buy the Blu-Ray or see it again.
• The narration was very odd too and somewhat off-putting, but the direction of that final half-hour was absolutely breathtaking.
• And for that, I’ll give it the edge into positivity and say, The Walk is a Good Time and Definitely Worth Checking Out.

***

So guys, those are my thoughts on The Walk! What are your thoughts on this movie if you’ve seen it yet? Let me know in the comments down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.