Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Steve Valentine, Benedict Samuel, Stuart Fink, Yanik Ethier, Soleyman Pierini, Patrick Baby, Marie Turgeon, Clément Sibony, César Domboy, Mark Camacho.
There are some individuals in this world who when you come across them make you glad to be alive. Not for the passion of love, but for the sheer scale of their ambition to create something so unique that it can never be topped, something so artistic, so elegant, so completely and utterly insane that it screams with joy when you see it visualised.
In 1974 a young Frenchman and his associates pulled off arguably one of the most daring stunts of all time and brought fame and love to a pair of buildings that had been decried and ill thought of until that moment. Philippe Petit’s name may have passed you by, after all the world has got a lot more safety conscious since those heady days, but he was the man he made New Yorker’s look up to the heavens and see beauty in a wirewalker and The Walk across 140 feet of New York air.
The distance between two spaces is not normally an issue, but the height of the structures is. It is one thing being a wirewalker 20 feet off the ground, that is dynamic in itself, but a quarter of a mile up, no harness in case of unforeseen accidents, now that is truly and utterly human.
For Joseph Gordon-Levitt The Walk is perhaps the film that really pushes the boundaries of his acting career to date, intensely charming as Philippe Petit, the role, both physically and mentally, more demanding than anything he has done so far and one that might catch many audiences out for the sheer exhaustive nature and feeling of vertigo that both they and the actor must overcome in which truly make the film stand out. Mr Gordon-Levitt brings a sense of sincerity to the part that would have surely been lost in any other actor, the hard work and faith placed in him by Philippe Petit, the rigours of performance, all coming together to make The Walk a film of high tension and drama; one that is completely immersed in the reality of truth.
The Walk is a rare film that despite some very good performances by other actors, notably Clément Sibony, César Domboy, the excellent Steve Valentine and James Badge Dale, truly belongs to one actor, one artiste, the memory of two of the greatest man-made monuments ever to grace the Earth and as the film makes a dedication too at the end, all those that lost their lives in them in 2001. This is a film that makes you believe in the spirit of humanity, the underlying thread that encapsulates us all, if we are fortunate, to truly breathe and touch the fingers of genius.
A stunning spectacular, The Walk is a phenomenon.
Ian D. Hall