“The Walk” hardly delivers a solid storytelling, running for most of its part almost only to arrive at its titular climactic moment that happens only during the film’s final few minutes.
At one point there is a sense of wanting the ‘walk’ to be the ‘run’ as proceedings start to feel as if everything has nowhere good to go. But as the saying goes, ” all roads lead to Rome”, the rough and rocky roads in “The Walk”, eventually arrives to its destination, and once it gets there, it will definitely be worth the time and patience.
Chronicling the attempt of Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Lewitt) and his team, to wire-walk between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, this Robert Zemecki’s vision of the near-impossible feat, stuns with its spectacular panoramic visuals, but it stumbles miserably reaching the realization of its promise.
The narrative almost entirely runs through a lazy set-up, only picking up an inviting pace during the time when Petit starts to plan carrying out his death-defying stunt. There’s a forced and unwanted dosage of humor whose comic intents are barely sensibly delivered, and poorly executed dialogues that bear the sameness of blandness and unimpressive accents, grind the capacity of the film’s narrative to engross audience, into mortifying-ly absurd pieces of its uninspired script.
This flaw persists toward the film’s final act, and if not only with the eye popping render of its shots that keep almost everything palatable, it will lose its audience before the final show.
Still, that feels unfair to say for a dramatization whose biggest ambition is only to deliver a single thrilling moment – one so nearly impossible, one would not right away believe this is based on a true story. And the film does that, as if cleaning up all its mess on the stage when everything is set for its most important act, pulling off its climactic set piece in one breathtaking render.
That’s the same moment when tension and emotions are at their most convincing levels, when one’s heartbeat and breath go racing after another as the impossible finally turns into reality.
RATING: 8/10 (JE)
