The Walk opens by announcing that it’s based on a true story. This is indeed true: as anyone who has seen James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire – about Philippe Petit’s dare-devil trip on a tightrope between the twin towers in 1974 – knows. After watching Robert Zemeckis’s 3D retelling, you’d be forgiven for thinking it never actually happened.
Zemeckis’s last movie, Flight, proved that the master of mainstream spectacle behind the likes of Back to the Future, Cast Away and Forrest Gump could also capably manage gritty drama. Save the – very tense – plane crash sequence, Flight was minimal by the film-maker’s standards, and successful with it: sparse treatment suiting the strong performances and powerful story. The Walk more closely resembles The Polar Express and Beowulf – Zemeckis’s patchy, uncanny-valley explorations into motion-capture. For there is no semblance of reality here. As a live action film, The Walk rings wholly false.
But Zemeckis can’t be faulted for a wobbly tone. From the cornball introduction, which has Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Petit talking directly to the audience from the top of the Statue of Liberty with the World Trade Center in sun-kissed background, The Walk is nothing if not consistent. For the whole of its two-hour running time, it plays like a Disney cartoon, right down to the hammy sidekicks who aid Petit on his mission (the exception is Petit’s girlfriend, Annie Allix, who Charlotte Le Bon somehow suggests may be a living, breathing person). The less said about Ben Kingsley’s tough-love Gallic trainer the better.
By the same measure, Gordon-Levitt is the perfect fit for Zemeckis’s vision. As Petit, he does nothing but grandstand for the entire picture and speak with a committed yet deeply dubious French accent. His Petit is a showman and nothing else; less an Oscar actor contender than an audition to be the host. Based on his work in The Walk, he ought to get the job.
The story The Walk tells is, admittedly, an unbelievable one, so it’s understandable Zemeckis should choose to leave subtlety at the door. Sadly, such an approach strips the film of tension, especially at the crucial moment. That said, although risk feels intangible, the key sequence when Petit inches across still looks awesome, especially in vertigo-inducing 3D.
Shame, then, that these spectacular visuals are undercut with silly voiceover which has Gordon-Levitt explaining his thought process every step of the way. If immersion was the point, why undercut it so fatally? Such counterpoint means even when The Walk inspires the eyes, the brain registers little but banality.
