Our number two of the top 10 most underrated movies of 2015 has arrived on DVD and Blu-Ray. Now, go get it and master in the marvel that is Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk!
Joseph Gordon Levitt is phenomenal as Philippe Petit, the real-life Frenchman who dared to dream, and then accomplish the impossible. In the early ‘70s, Petit crossed the World Trade Centers, aka the Twin Towers, in Manhattan on nothing but a tiny steel wire. The high wire act captured the fancy of the world, but especially New Yorkers, who — believe it or not — were mixed on their reaction to the towering twins in lower Manhattan.
Petit was never blasé about the World Trade Center. While living in his native France, the young man came across an artist’s rendering of what would be and immediately the Frenchman was in love. He already loved the city, and now his passion for what was growing to the sky was at a fever pitch. He was also a showman, a performer who was seeking new heights — literally — to triumph over. Petit famously scaled the two towers of the Notre Dame cathedral, but that wasn’t enough. He sought more and found it.
How he accomplished that goal is the crux of Zemeckis’ The Walk, which often feels like a heist film… and delightfully so.
See, it’s not like Petit could just walk up to the still under construction towers and head up to the roof and walk across. That would be illegal! He would assemble a team, including his love (delightfully played by Charlotte Le Bon) that would make his dream a reality.
As we stated more deeply in our theatrical The Walk review, the film is a love letter to the Twin Towers and New York City itself. Zemeckis and Gordon Levitt have joined forces to create a mastery of wonder. If you are not inspired after witnessing The Walk, it would be hard to believe.
Inspiration is the theme of The Walk DVD and Blu-Ray as the bonus features do a marvel of a job taking the viewer inside the making of another piece of Zemeckis magic (after all, he’s the guy who gave us everything from Back to the Future to The Polar Express).
Gordon Levitt not only tackled the persona of Petit, but actually learned to walk on a wire to ensure that what the viewer witnessed felt real to maximize the impact of the powerful story. The bonus feature First Steps – Learning to Walk the Wire is a nine-minute look at how the real-life Petit mentored the film’s star in the art of wire walking. It also delves into the emotional and physical work that Gordon Levitt did to create every ounce of reality from the Twin Towers wire walker.
Even though this is clearly Gordon Levitt’s film from beginning to end, it has a supporting cast that is stellar… including Oscar winner Ben Kingsley. Pillars of Support shines the spotlight squarely on them and shows how this one man show was in fact, truly an ensemble. We also adore the moniker of this bonus feature, given the presence and power of the Twin Towers, one truly gets the impression that Gordon Levitt had his own Twin Towers of help in making The Walk a truly mesmerizing journey.
Finally, we have to salute the featurette The Amazing Walk. Zemeckis is no stranger to creating movie worlds that take the viewer away. But with so much of the world having memories of the Twin Towers so engrained in their mind, his recreation of them had to be not only perfect, but a loving tribute. He accomplished that and so much more and it is truly magical and powerful to see how he did it in The Amazing Walk. The featurette also explores the process of converting the film to 3D and why it was done in 3D. Zemeckis wanted to put the viewer on that wire with Petit, and in the end, he did that and so much more.
Film: A-
Bonus Features: A-