Film Review: The Walk

The Walk. Rated PG (Mild themes and coarse language). 123 minutes. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Christopher Browne. Based on the book To Reach the Clouds by Philippe Petit.

At sunrise on 7 August 1974, 25-year-old French high-wire artist Philippe Petit stepped out onto his high-wire 400 metres above the ground – either end of which was attached to each of New York’s World Trade Center Twin Towers. For the next 45 minutes, Petit would walk backwards and forwards between the towers eight times.

We first meet Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), perched next to the Statue of Liberty’s torch. Behind him, the towers dominate the skyline, something that made them incredibly unpopular with New Yorkers at the time of their construction. Today, seeing them again brings mixed emotions, particularly as their spectacularly brutalist presence dominates every element of the story.

Gordon-Levitt is sensational as the ambitious dreamer, determined to rise to the pinnacle of his death-defying artform. As the collaborators who will be able to bring the artistic and engineering aspects of his feat to reality, Ben Kingsley is in top form as Papa Rudy, a high-wire veteran who takes Petit under his wing, while Charlotte Le Bon is perfect as Annie, Petit’s girlfriend, who refuses to doubt that he will survive the attempt. But the winning support comes from César Domboy’s Jeff, a mathematician who rather unfortunately has a fear of heights. Once we arrive on the roof of the tower, it is Jeff who becomes our terrified touchstone.

Zemeckis (Flight, Cast Away, Forrest Gump) and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (The Martian, Prometheus, Pirates of the Caribbean) have masterfully recreated Petit’s performance, and their seriously vertigo-inducing camera captures the action from every possible (and some seemingly impossible) angle. But the haunting final word of dialogue suggests that this film is intended to be as much a tribute to the majesty of the Twin Towers as it is to the incomprehensible fearlessness of Philippe Petit.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Flight

Flight. Rated MA 15+ (strong themes, drug use and nudity). 138 minutes. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by John Gatins.

Verdict: A powerful, uncompromising study of the perils of addiction.

As painfully intimate, human dramas go, it is hard to imagine a more compelling recent offering than this. Combining a terrifying plane crash with the potent and destructive issues associated with alcohol and drug addiction is the masterstroke in Gatins’s (Real Steel) terrific, Oscar®-nominated screenplay. In the hands of Zemeckis (The Polar Express, Cast Away, What Lies Beneath, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back to the Future) and his frequent collaborators, cinematographer Don Burgess and editor Jeremiah O'Driscoll, the results are utterly engrossing.

Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is an airline pilot. He is also an alcoholic. When a disastrous mechanical failure occurs on one of his flights and he manages to avert what could have been an accident of catastrophic proportions, he is hailed as a hero. But when the hospital’s toxicology report reveals traces of alcohol and cocaine in his blood system at the time of the accident, the airline and the pilot’s union do everything within their power to avoid being held liable for the accident.

Washington is magnificent as the booze-soaked and drug-addled Whitaker, delivering a career-defining, Oscar®-nominated performance of immense range. He is brilliantly supported by Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes), whose heroin-addicted Nicole meets Whitaker in hospital where they are both recovering – her from an overdose and him from the accident. This unlikely meeting leads to an extraordinary relationship between two individuals struggling to overcome their very personal addictions. This powerful, richly-layered study of the perils of addiction provides Flight with an uncompromising, rich vein of dramatic depth that is unexpectedly resolved in the penultimate scenes in front of the National Transportation Safety Board enquiry – lead with brutal efficiency by the superb Melissa Leo (The Fighter).

Under Zemeckis’s masterful direction, the stricken airliner sequences are astonishing, but we soon find ourselves in the equally-involving world of very human consequences. Consequences that, one day – even with the very best intentions of friends, loved ones, colleagues and family – may become impossible to continue to deny.

This review was commissioned by the Geraldton Newspaper Group.