Man on Wire (2008)

Hello again, I am extremely excited to be writing yet another review for Into Film and cannot wait to get started despite how much rambling the introduction alone contains!!! I hope you enjoy the review and watch the documentary afterwards half the time you may not be able to understand it but overall it was great. I must say to begin with I felt slightly overwhelmed at the speed and the sheer amount of information that was coming at you, I was sat there wandering what it was all about for the first five minutes and to be quite honest, was not following it at all. So, complaint number one would be the start was too fast paced and hard to hang on to. This was NOT helped by the fact I could not understand the French people who were attempting English were saying and it was majorly disconcerting to say the least, though I cannot say much for language learning in this country. I much preferred having the subtitles at the bottom of the screen which was how it worked with the French people who could not speak English. I think it should have been like that for everyone, except the American blokes and of course the Australian one too. I was very confused by the amount of footage they had on the documentary, it was as if the team had been planning to get on a documentary. Though it helped on the understanding and context side of things and made it seem like a film which gave the documentary more depth. Complaint number two, I thought the flashback was used beyond effect and it ruined the story line a little as in the middle of one section you would just jump to the other, giving the story less flow and therefore gripping the audience less. Not a good idea. The flashback was good however in a sense that you can see two things at once, there is more action and more for the viewer to think about at one specific time. Of course, we must talk about the topic itself. Man on Wire eh!? Even that glum looking policeman seemed moderately interested though he seemed completely bored at the same time. He was going 'It was once in a lifetime' while looking like he had seen it 100 times already. Back to the subject, I thought it was original and I certainly was not expecting it which intrigued me even more. Well I luckily was not intrigued enough to stare at the screen while live explicit scenes were going on (it might sound like I am being posh but there is a rule clearly stated not to use rude language) Complaint number 3 or 4 I seriously DO NOT think I wanted to watch a documentary to see a man and women stripping off and romancing repeatedly whether it was quick or not. Plus, the Man on wire had a girlfriend. Betrayal! I also have another complaint, the documentary revealed what would happen at the end through showing the man alive and well as he talked about what had happened and I knew he would survive immediately, scraping the effect off the documentary a little bit. Though based on the style of the documentary I wonder whether it was a huge cost for a quality first-person retelling that you did get helping you understand what was a truly crazy topic. So, Man on Wire, a name that sounds derived from the Stone age yet a seamlessly intriguing and touching documentary nevertheless. I hope you enjoyed my review and I will be back yet again in two weeks time to write another one.