What a strange movie. The movie is narrated over by Joseph Gorden-Levitt as Philippe Petit, which is especially weird since a Documentary Man on A Wire was already exists that does this. Why not just do a dramatization of events rather than a documentary narrative style recreated? Which does not play out well. For one, Philippe Petit (the wire walker)is a very dramatic and expressive when telling the story, which is great for a documentary style when he's telling the story, but when you have an American actor doing an over dramatic French accent narrative to copy the real life guy, it comes across as a bad actor doing an over the top French accent (there's really no way you get it right as an actor).
The dialogue style is one of the worst that I've ever seen, especially since it's based on real life events. It's the kind of movie if you were involved in it in anyway you ask to be permanently removed from the credits. One of the silliest moments is the cop scene on the roof.... I can't even put it into words. The dialogue and the acting style is very cartoonish and/or like something you would see on the Three Stooges. This style is prevalent throughout. I really have no idea what the director was going for. It's embarrassing! I'm embarrassed for any movie critic who gave this a positive review (they have no business being a movie critic). I understand that some will agree that it's a dreadful movie, but the visuals in the last 30 minutes make it worth it.... not really. The special effects/visuals are nothing to be admired and even if they were, it shouldn't have the power to carry such a ridiculously bad movie.
Spoilers Of course they change things to make it more movie friendly which is fine, but how it actually ended is a bit different. Essentially this Philippe Petit dude instantly got a really big head upon completing the wire walk. He gets released from jail while two of his friends get extradited back to France (banned from the US forever) and Philippe gets cleared (which is fine). I believe it's the same day or the day after when he gets released, he's doing press conferences when some chick wants to give him a warm celebration so he goes off and does that while leaving his girlfriend and friends hanging and it doesn't stop there, he essentially permanently leaves all of his friends and people associated with the wire walk hanging. So all of his friends who made it possible for him to achieve this dream and who were there with him from the beginning, he dropped all of them like a bad habit the second he was done with his wire walk. He never spoke to his girlfriend or any of the many people involved with it ever again... not even a thank you. It's actually a very bitter sweet ending to the documentary, which is what you should watch and skip over this piece of garbage of a movie.
The dialogue style is one of the worst that I've ever seen, especially since it's based on real life events. It's the kind of movie if you were involved in it in anyway you ask to be permanently removed from the credits. One of the silliest moments is the cop scene on the roof.... I can't even put it into words. The dialogue and the acting style is very cartoonish and/or like something you would see on the Three Stooges. This style is prevalent throughout. I really have no idea what the director was going for. It's embarrassing! I'm embarrassed for any movie critic who gave this a positive review (they have no business being a movie critic). I understand that some will agree that it's a dreadful movie, but the visuals in the last 30 minutes make it worth it.... not really. The special effects/visuals are nothing to be admired and even if they were, it shouldn't have the power to carry such a ridiculously bad movie.
Spoilers Of course they change things to make it more movie friendly which is fine, but how it actually ended is a bit different. Essentially this Philippe Petit dude instantly got a really big head upon completing the wire walk. He gets released from jail while two of his friends get extradited back to France (banned from the US forever) and Philippe gets cleared (which is fine). I believe it's the same day or the day after when he gets released, he's doing press conferences when some chick wants to give him a warm celebration so he goes off and does that while leaving his girlfriend and friends hanging and it doesn't stop there, he essentially permanently leaves all of his friends and people associated with the wire walk hanging. So all of his friends who made it possible for him to achieve this dream and who were there with him from the beginning, he dropped all of them like a bad habit the second he was done with his wire walk. He never spoke to his girlfriend or any of the many people involved with it ever again... not even a thank you. It's actually a very bitter sweet ending to the documentary, which is what you should watch and skip over this piece of garbage of a movie.