Joanna Langfield's The Movie Minute

The Walk Philippe Petit thinks of his tightrope performances as art. Taking on a high-wire task himself, Robert Zemeckis, retelling Petit’s most famous walk, creates his own art, with a 3D mastery that is nothing but depth defying and beautifully sweat provoking. Yes, this is the story of Petit’s notorious walk between the just built towers of New York City’s World Trade Center. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, balancing the Frenchman’s arrogance and lithe charm, plays the ambitious stuntman and much of the early part of the film focuses on how Petit learned his craft and then, collected the people and plans to help him, almost literally and certainly illegally, walk on air. All of this is handled with a light grace, along with a few comic moments. We know we’re all building up to ‘the walk’, a feat every viewer knows was actually accomplished. So how does Zemeckis grab us? It’s visual. And what visual. The Martian A mass appeal movie that proclaims it’s going to ‘science the shit out of this’? Go figure: this genui