Thanks to Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man On Wire, that story’s still fresh in the memory, and though Zemeckis started work on The Walk before James Marsh’s doc hit, releasing his film in its wake comes with a nagging sense of déjà vu.

Still, Zemeckis certainly strives to put his stamp on Petit’s story, bringing to bear his flair for FX (Roger Rabbit, Polar Express et al). Utilising 3D IMAX to its vertiginous limit, he puts you right up there with Petit during The Walk’s superior second hour, trembling alongside the man himself on a 450lb steel cable.

Petit’s backstory is similarly shot with an eye on spectacle. We meet him working as a Paris street performer, where he falls for busker Annie Allix (Charlotte Le Bon, channelling Winona Ryder) and goes on to be mentored by Ben Kingsley’s Czech circus trainer. When he comes across a picture of the Twin Towers, Petit decides fate is steering him toward his destiny.

There’s eye candy aplenty in The Walk’s black-and-white opening, with its beautiful, Spielbergian flourishes of colour, and the 3D is immersive instead of obtrusive, drawing us into Petit’s world. If the visuals score high, though, the rest of Zemeckis’ film struggles to get off the ground.

With shorn hair and CGI’d blue peepers, Gordon-Levitt confidently captures Petit’s buzzing eccentricities, even if his French accent occasionally slips into ’Allo ’Allo! cliché. But he can’t save a clunky device that sees him narrate the story from the Statue Of Liberty, which only bleeds the film’s central set-piece of tension.

For all its obvious ambition, Zemeckis’ film suffers most for being too broad in scope. Its backstory-heavy first hour (drawn from Petit’s autobiography To Reach The Clouds) is overly twee, and the pace only picks up when, halfway through, The Walk transforms into an engaging heist movie as Petit and his co-conspirators infiltrate the Twin Towers.

“To walk on the wire,” he says, “this is life.” It’s just a shame Zemeckis shows so much of Petit’s life, when all that really matters is what happens on the wire.

The Verdict

3

3 out of 5

the walk

A patchy biopic that only thrills when Gordon-Levitt finally steps out onto the wire. Still, for all the 3D showboating, it’s a touching tribute to the Twin Towers.

The post The Walk review appeared first on Game News.

A goofy thriller about hipsters doing cool shit on hot bikes was bound to be a comedown in his Looper/Dark Knight Rises year, unless you count Kevin Bacon’s 1986 rarity Quicksilver as a lost classic.

But with Koepp directing slickly and Gordon-Levitt flaunting the working-Joe appeal of a Keanu Reeves who can act, the result plays like a two-wheeled half- Speed : daft but fun.

Pumping out cod- Point Break lifestyle-speak (“I like to ride…”) as NYC bike messenger Wilee, Gordon-Levitt works up an agreeable sweat. So does Koepp, lunging the camera through traffic and into the air to map-nav routes before staging game-style live/die options at road junctions.

Brisk pace set, he then tricks up the timeline, dialling back from the opening crash to show how Wilee takes charge of delivering a mystery letter that gets bad cop Bobby (Michael Shannon) on his tail.

The plot threatens to tank when it reverses again, but Shannon’s raging-bull Bobby engages as Koepp fills in the blanks around his interest in Wilee’s cargo.

Pity Jamie Chung is a blank as the enigma behind the loaded letter, her story precipitating twists that feel ham-fisted in a film primarily interested in the low-brow thrill of the chase.

But if the pace never fully recovers from the mid-stretch, and if plausibility croaks in bike-on-car crunches that no one could peel themselves up off the road from, Rush just about still hits the target teased by Wilee’s name.

Making sure to drop in the question, “as in Coyote?”, Koepp dispatches Rush as a live-action cartoon that gains what traction it has from extended races on real streets, Shannon’s hefty nasty and Gordon-Levitt’s game performance.

How game? Wait for the end-credits outtakes and see. Not totally unscathed, then.

The post Premium Rush review appeared first on Game News.