Waste of time

The greatest movie ever!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It is remarkably melancholic, the ending leaving you with the bitter-sweet taste of victory at the cost of perhaps something greater, but there's also a strange joy found in this slightly 'insane' man's veraciously vivid, infectiously excited passion as he recollects what is essentially a heist, only it doesn't end in a theft it ends in, as he and his friends put it, a gift. It's a bizarre goal to have and yet you wholly understand it because the documentary not only pulls you into its narrative but also into the maniacally single-minded mind of the motivated wire-walker at its centre, wrapping you up in his wild, wide-eyed dream so you don't wonder why anyone would want to do it but rather why anyone wouldn't, and its this that keeps the piece working even through its weirdest turns, when things suddenly turn sad, spiritual or even sexual. 7/10

As a cinematic experience, this is good. It's got a compelling story, which it explains the intricate technicalities of well and drops the viewer right in the thick of a suspenseful undertaking, while the back and forth between the interviewed parties (all playing themselves) and the older filmed footage and documents makes for a solid platform to deliver the goods.But ultimately, at heart, this is a terribly futile, vain story built around a man who evidently was the loneliest soul in the world who was in such dire need of attention he would illegally pull a tightrope walking stunt right on the highest point of New York city. The film attempts to make it more poetic than what it really is; the illegal act of a psychopath; and seems to push for an emotional climax that feels unnecessary and forced, and really it highlights the various different aspects of the vanity behind that main character (his superficial attachments to close friends, the emptiness of life and how everyone is interchangeable and nothing exceeds the present moment or has profound meaning...).The film also tries hard to ride the aesthetic wave: there's a sort of overt appreciation for the Frenchness on display, the french accents and spirit, the poetry... obviously, this is an entire film-documentary about a ludicrous and totally ephemeral gig.

MAN ON WIRE is an engaging documentary telling the true story of Philippe Petit's attempts to cross the gap between the Twin Towers on a tightrope back in the 1970s. As other commentators have mentioned, it's a sometimes gripping story that plays out like a heist film, with lots of careful planning and preparation leading up to the 'big job'. The biggest disappointment is that nobody thought to film the walk for posterity, although photos do exist and are included.The documentary consists of voice over narration, plenty of interview footage with the still-surviving members of Petit's gruop, and reenactments of the events leading up to the stunt. I'm not really a huge fan of reenactments in documentaries - I'm capable of picturing stuff for myself in my mind's eye so I find them a bit pandering - but they're done quite classily here. It's a slight story, truth be told, but the documentary retelling is done professionally which makes it engaging.

In 1974, Philippe Petit does an illegal high wire walk between the twin towers at New York City's World Trade Center. Philippe, his girlfriend Annie, and his friends started working on wire-walks on various monuments. First it's in Paris and then it's the Sydney Habor Bridge. In NYC, they gather new comrades as the gang plans out a scheme to transport the material up to the top which is still under construction. After making the walk, Philippe is arrested. In his arrest record under Details of Complaint, the police had written "Man on Wire".Philippe's french accent is almost hypnotic. He is a man of real drive. It's a relatively simple documentary. The surprising aspect is how much of a caper story the scheme turns out to be. It's better than most fictional capers and Philippe's hyper descriptions are mesmerizing. The pictures of the walk are awesome. There is something beautiful about the whole story.