Robert Zemeckis’ “The Walk’’ reaches for the s🎀ky when aerialist Philippe Petit mounts a wire perilously stretched between the original World Trade Center towers, two-thirds of the way through this lighthearted docudrama, which makes great use of the 3-D IMAX format.
The trailers suggest a realistic thriller, not unlike “Man꧂ on Wire,’’ which covered much the same ground and won the 2008 Oscar for Best Documentary. But the family-friendly film, which had its world premiere Saturday night at the New York Film Festival, instead approaches history with a more fantastical and comic tone, not unlike Zemeckis’ “Forrest Gump.’’
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Pepé Le Pew-ish Fre⭕nch accent takes getting used to, but he turns out to be an inspired choice to play Petit, a former Paris street mime who first gains public attention when he wire-walks between the towers of Notre Dame cathedral.
Gor🥂don-Levitt’s comic chops and infectious likability help get you past wha💖t amounts to lengthy prologue about Petit’s obsession with wire-walking, which crystallizes when he sees a drawing of the WTC towers in a magazine.
Atop the towers, a ragtag conspirator fires🉐 an arrow between the roofs so a 140-foot-long wire can be strung between them.
The film up to here is sometimes slow and occasionally corny — and doesn’t strictly follow the facts, something signaled by Petit’s abundant narration, delivered by Go♓rdon-Levitt from the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
But Zemeckis finally delivers the goods in abundance in the section that 🌟really counts: A vertigo-inducing digital re🍌-creation of Petit’s famous walk back and forth between the towers, 110 stories above street level. The tension is goosed a bit with Petit’s fantasies of what might go wrong.
In the end, “The Walk’’ finds a graceful way to pay 🌄tribute not only to Petit’s bravery and determination — but to the thousands lost on 9/11 in the buildings this daredevil loved so much.