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'Walk' takes viewers on spellbinding journey

When Robert Zemeckis' fact-based tale of mad dreams "The Walk" comes out on video formats, I anticipate that many viewers will skip over the strained "Mission: Impossible"-like setup and bypass the dumbfoundingly overwritten first-person narration.

In short, they just want to get to the good stuff.

Because in this movie, the good stuff is great stuff.

"The Walk" retells the story of how French wire walker Philippe Petit illegally walked across a wire stretched between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in 1974, stunning onlookers and amazing people all over the globe.

Anyone who's seen James Marsh's 2008 documentary "Man on Wire" knows that Petit didn't die during his ambitious stunt.

Even if you haven't seen the doc, you still know Petit (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) doesn't fall because he narrates the movie while standing on Lady Liberty's torch overlooking an impressively reconstructed view of 1974 New York City.

But that's the raw power of Zemeckis' final 40 minutes. Petit's perilous walk between two buildings 100 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower has been so skillfully rendered and so powerfully presented (at least in the 3-D IMAX format I saw) that we start to believe that he could still die at any moment!

Not since John Glenn's death-defying return during "The Right Stuff" has there been a sequence this riveting, even though we know the outcome.

Gordon-Levitt's Petit bubbles with enthusiasm as he narrates his story, in both French and French-fried English.

Fascinated by circus wire-walkers since childhood, Petit sees a photo of the Twin Towers in a magazine and realizes his destiny.

"It's impossible!" he shouts. "But I will do it!"

He first gains the trust of a crusty Czech master wire walker (Ben Kingsley) before assembling his own Impossible Missions Force in New York City. He calls these people "accomplices" - street musician Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), photographer Jean-Louis (Clement Sibony), acrophobe math whiz Jean-Francois (Cesar Domboy), quick-talking salesman JP (James Badge Dale) and an insurance guy (Steve Valentine).

Zemeckis, with co-writer Christopher Browne, wastes a lot of dialogue on the obvious ("I have one foot on the building, one foot on the wire," Petit says. Yes, we can see that.)

The camera lingers on its sentimental homage to the Twin Towers far too long, and if a six-story-tall IMAX slurpy kiss feels more intimidating than intimate, that doesn't really matter.

For half an hour, a man walks across a thin wire over a metropolitan void and we are held spellbound, transfixed and frightened to nausea by one of the most galvanizing events ever committed to cinema.

“The Walk”

★ ★ ★ ½

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Charlotte Le Bon, Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis

Other: A TriStar Pictures release. Rated PG. 123 minutes

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