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Man on Wire

Robert Zemeckis‘ new dazzling CGI-fueled wonder The Walk opens in select IMAX theaters tomorrow (it gets a wide release in regular theaters on October 9), and follows an infamously quirky moment in New York City history: on August 7, 1974, the French high-wire artist Philippe Petit strolled across a wire stretched between the World Trade Center towers, causing an sensation before he was apprehended by the NYPD after a 45-minute performance (during which he made eight passes on the wire).

The Walk stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the spritely little French imp who bounces and balances on that wire 1,300 feet above the ground, and while early buzz says that the film’s final act (focusing on the titular walk itself) is quite a marvel, the rest of the movie is, well, kind of boring and beleaguered by Gordon-Levitt’s accent that sounds more like Pepé Le Pew than Philippe Petit. Of course, you don’t have to head to your local IMAX to experience Petit’s story. It was already the focus on an Academy Award-winning documentary: James Marsh’s Man on Wire.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz89x2Oj8hY]

What makes Man on Wire such a fascinating documentary is that it takes rare footage of both Petit’s high-wire act in the sky and his rehearsals and combines those with talking head interviews and reenactments to create a terse, spine-tingling film that resembles more of a heist film than a critically acclaimed documentary. The fact that its feels like a thriller and a narrative already makes this new fictional retelling feel a little moot (but I guess wearing 3D glasses and feeling the rush of a CGI-generated Joseph Gordon-Levitt hanging out on the WTC roof is something we desperately needed to experience this year).

Do you need to see The Walk? Probably not — especially if you have to sit through more than half of a movie to get to the actual walking you’re promised. And especially not since Man on Wire is already available to stream right now on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

[You can stream Man On Wire on Netflix or Amazon Prime]

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