‘And although a wire-walker should never look down… I do’
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Robert Zemeckis is a wonderful director. Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? We are talking about classics here. Films that are weaved in to our very cultural fabric. I also like Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He’s been pretty quiet recently, but he’s done a lot of stuff I’ve enjoyed. I still harbour a deep loathing for Zooey Deschanel’s character in 500 Days of Summer, for example. Zemeckis and Gordon-Levitt together should be a home run. What went wrong?
Philippe Petit (Gordon-Levitt) is a tightrope walker who dreams of walking the ultimate walk – the distance between the twin towers of New York. He is helped to fulfill this dream by his friend Annie (Charlotte Le Bon) and his mentor Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley).
Aside from the fact that everyone is sporting a dodgy accent, there are just no likeable characters here. Petit is smug, childish and selfish. Annie wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test if she spoke for a thousand years and Ben Kingsley sleepwalks his way through the role of Papa Rudy. Petit’s origin story and the first few steps he takes on the wire between the Twin Towers are the film’s best moments, but everything in between feels either superfluous or just plain dull. The fact that The Walk made a big deal about being in 3D upon release should have set alarm bells ringing. Nobody likes 3D. Some people might think they like it, but they don’t.
A master director and a talented actor have combine here to produce something that is much less than the sum of its parts. An unremarkable, self-satisfied movie that was deservedly forgotten about the moment that it was released. Watch almost any other Zemeckis film instead, even Beowulf. Ok, maybe not Beowulf but literally anything else.