It's a very rare occurrance for me to go to the cinema to see a documentary (I usually find them on More4 or a channel like that fairly quickly afterwards), but Man on Wire had been doing the rounds in all of my arthouses and even had a week at my multiplex so I was intrigued enough to check it out. It's very simply the story of how Philippe Petit (stark raving mad, in the way only French people can be) fulfilled his lifelong ambition of wire-walking between the towers of the world trade centre.
The film is told by director James Marsh in the style of a heist-movie, we see (through dramatic reconstructions) them gaining access to the building with the help of their "inside man" and all the players are introduced with their aliases or nicknames emblazoned on the screen. It then flicks back to show you his training as a youngster, his previous stunts in Paris and Sydney whilst coming back to the attempt of the twin towers. Everyone involved in the scam recounts their part in it to camera, but Pierre's stories are the only ones with added theatrics to his memories.
The temptation here is to compare it to something like Touching the Void but it's so unfair to do so because of the nature of both stories, however what something like Kevin Macdonald's film does is highlight this film's considerable flaws. Firstly they pad it out because there's frankly not enough content to sustain its runtime - it's at least a good 15 minutes too long and they put a lot of unnecessary and uninvolving stuff in to get it up to 90 minutes. Secondly they use the storytelling tricks and have Petit showboating in his recounting the events to camera because ... the story itself of the "how" isn't that compelling, you can't just put the camera flatly in front of him and have him tell you what happened because there's really not that much to it. Thirdly, a lot of stuff is left out (his financing, the aftermath is skated over and actually cheapens the act in what little it does show) and considering this is a documentary that's not good news. Fourthy (and partly as a result of that) it ends rather abruptly and doesn't tie things together, it feels a bit rushed which sadly documentaries of "events" tend to do.
That said though, it is very entertaining. A lot of the people are funny, the very ridiculousness of the act itself makes their explaining helping him all the funnier, it's consistently amusing and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. The part of the documentary detailing the moments immediately before and during his attempt are genuinely tense and you almost feel time stop watching it, but then that's something you have all the way through a film like Touching the Void and it all comes a touch "too little too late" here. It only becomes a vital film right at the end and it's a very different feeling to the rest of the story they've been telling up to that point. So I would recommend it because it is fun, but it's not a brilliant one either as a documentary (as details are missed out) or a film (as even at 90 minutes it feels a bit flabby), worth checking out though.