Review of "Man on Wire"

I finally got around to watching Man on Wire last night.  Warning - Spoilers ahead.  Though the movie has modern day interviews with all the main characters so you know that they survived and the movie poster shows him walking in between the buildings so really their isn't much to spoil.

It's the story of Frenchmen Philippe Petit's goal to walk a tight rope between the World Trade Center towers. Just typing that now make my fingers and toes tingle like I'm looking over the side of a building.  My balls ache a little bit too, though I wasn't planning on telling you that.

The movie follows a group of men planning and executing this daring feat.  It's almost like a heist or a bank robbery  movie. It occasionally flashes back to the times when Philippe crossed between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral and some bridge in Austrailia, but for the most part focuses on the WTC.

Philippe looks at the tight rope walking as a living piece of art.  In the end he walks between the two WTC towers for 45 minutes and even lays down on the wire, teasing policemen on each side.

After his eventual arrest the DA gives Philippe a deal that lets him go free if he performs for children.  Immediately after his release a woman approaches him from the crowd and he sexes her up.  They even appear to have footage of the two frolicking in a hotel room.  I don't think these scenes were reenacted and let me say ol' Phillipe did well for himself.  In any case he cheated on his girlfriend who was featured in the movie, but Frenchmen were born to cheat so it's no big deal.

The odd thing about this movie is that as soon as the goal is completed everybody in the group decides that it is time to go their separate ways.  Philippe and his girlfriend break up and the group of friends stop being friends.

The movie is pretty good though slow in parts, but the feat itself is still amazing to this day.  It is worth watching.