It’s 1973 and the world’s tallest buildings, The World Trade Center in New York City, have just been constructed. Philippe Petit, a street performer in Paris, has a dream: to attach a wire between the ‘The Twin Towers’ and cross it unassisted and without a fallback.

This is a true story. This is The Walk.

Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Philippe – a lovable but untiring man obsessed with his coup (as he calls it). Born and raised in France, with his head in the clouds (almost literally), he comes across a young woman called Annie, a fellow street performer. Together they form a relationship and partnership to help make Philippe’s conquest a reality.

Phillippe is trained by Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), a circus instructor, who teaches him about the art of wire walking – something he’d always been fond of and practiced, but never fully understood.

From here, events unfold like a heist film. There’s a goal, an insane amount of planning and a crew crazy enough to commit to the job. Petit narrates as the movie becomes more of a love story about New York and, specifically, the World Trade Center. Buildings that once was seen as an eyesore (Two tall filing cabinets – to quote the script) come alive through Petit’s tenacity and perseverance. Suddenly, the WTC becomes a feat of human engineering the city can be proud of.

Robert Zemeckis, the master behind Back to the Future, is the director of The Walk, he adds a certain nuance that crafts this to be a touching film, albeit by exploring less of the character’s relationships and more the passion and drive to do the walk. It adds elements a less skilled director may not have been able to achieve, and the film benefits from it.

The unorthodox approach to narration, and the nauseating framing (that had me feeling vertigo in the cinema) keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. Even though these towers don’t e exist anymore I could feel the height, the terror and eventual elation when he makes the walk (that’s not a spoiler – this is based off an Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire which in itself is based on the book To Reach the Clouds which is, in turn, based on the real life event of 7 August 1974.

It’s ideal to watch The Walk in 3D, depending on your fear levels of heights, but either way it is a triumph of visuals and effects, and it is refreshing to watch a film that is also celebrates the capacity for humans to do astonishing things. Sure, there are some weaker story beats and redundant scenes to pad the plot, but the amount of planning, gusto and luck to make this walk happen is incredible. It had never been done before and, tragically, will never be done again.