Man on Wire review

Man on Wire is about Philippe Petit's, who walked on a wire strung between the Twin Towers in 1974. It chronicled the plans to execute this and a little bit of the repercussions. It also showed Phillipe's relationships with his friends and their involvement in the plan. There really isn't a whole lot to summarize, so on to the next section!

The documentary opens with the group of people trying to get into the World Trade Center with all of their equipment. Whenever the actual execution of the plan is shown, there is a good amount of tension and it's pretty exciting. Most of the movie, however, shows Phillipe's daily life and his relationships with his friends. I have a problem with these sections, and it's not that they're not interesting. Much of the movie feels like a fairy tale. Phillipe is a weird guy, and the backgrounds of all of his friends and accomplices are not revealed very much. Basically, the story has a lot of mystery to it, and the documentary really plays this up. What happens is after a while, you give up on trying to relate to the story being presented, because it's just too weird to imagine being real. And because of this, it's not really working as a documentary anymore.

I give this movie a 2.5 out of 5 stars. It was interesting for a while, but then it stayed weird for too long and lost my interest because of that.