By Tommy McGlone
SPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE
The downfall of films based on historical events is often the decision to rely on pure emotion to carry it along, rather than developing the story.
Acclaimed director and screenwriter Robert Zemeckis’ attempt at a high-wire thriller, “The Walk,” falls right into this trap.
“The Walk” is the story of Philippe Petit – an arrogant, if charming, French high-wire stuntman (or as he would have it, “artist”).
The film details the 1974 efforts of Petit to walk a high wire across the World Trade Center.
Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has support for his self-proclaimed “coupe” – which is of a highly illegal nature. It is with this cast of motley characters that the story starts to deteriorate.
Petit is written as a highly unlikable character. He’s selfish, uncooperative and devoted only to his dream. While Gordon-Levitt’s acting brings some charm to the character, his actions, especially with his girlfriend Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), come across as crude and unfeeling.
Most of the other characters are not much better. Annie’s scenes become few and far between as the movie advances, leaving us with little investment in her love story with Petit. Other members of the crew, including a French photographer and antsy schoolteacher, receive so little development that it feels that they have little place in the film.
Zemeckis’s writing and directing choices are also strange. The director seems reluctant to take on a movie with elements of the “heist,” slipping in montages of the high-wire setup appropriate to the genre but diverging the score and dialogue towards a more emotional place.
His usual warm-hearted style appears out of place in a movie dominated by thrills, creating an odd tone that is hard to ignore.
Performance-wise, the movie is solid, but not impressive.
Gordon-Levitt clearly puts effort into the role of Petit, but his garish French accent and poor makeup job make it difficult to truly see Gordon-Levitt as any character but himself.
Charlotte Le Bon delivers a strong performance as Annie and Ben Kingsley shows his usual prowess as Petit’s instructor, a circus high-wire veteran.
Regardless, the performances by the rest of the team are too brief to grab any real attention. These characters were primarily developed through quips and quirks.
The film had some redeeming aspects, though. Gordon-Levitt’s acting and Zemeckis’s choices in cinematography shine, especially during the hire-wire scenes.
These scenes were immaculately scored with Beethoven’s “Für Elise” and shot with an unrestrained poeticism that would be expected of the director’s better works.
After the initial charm of the wire breaks, flaws in the CGI start to show as the camera tilts toward the city below and the focus shifts from Petit’s reverie in the sky to the reactions of the citizens below.
Ultimately, “The Walk” is far from Zemeckis’s worst. It makes the same mistake as many of his recent films, reverting to overtly heartfelt speeches and sentiments from its main characters without explaining why they matter.
Stuck on the middle of a wire between the style of its director and the direction its story so badly wants to go, “The Walk” ultimately fails to be anything more than two hours of artificial sentiment and suspense.