This strange, ancient mariner guy shuffles over to us as we stand at 8:30 pm, in the short but growing queue outside Alice Tully Hall, where the movie, The Walk, will have its world premiere during the 53rd Lincoln Center Film Festival.  His hair, flyaway, his body, flapped in summerwear too light for the evening chill in the early autumn air.

“What movie?” he demands.

We tell him, The Walk.

“Great special effects, average story…” he mumbles, wandering off uptown.

We yell after him: “Have you already seen the film?!”  He doesn’t turn back.  He’s off to other adventures, the albatross having evidently flown from his back.

We get to the auditorium, seated very close to the stage, where a moderator introduces director Zemeckis and a dozen of the producers, photographers, and lighting geniuses that created a 3D worth the time and effort it takes. 

Behind us, Philippe Petit grins from a balcony in a floodlight illuminating his pixie genial face and those of stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the piquant female lead, delightfully named Charlotte Le Bon.  From way up front, we can’t see if co-star Ben Kingsley is also waving down at us all; the angle is wrong.  The vast 2,000-person audience smiles and claps, delighted with our privilege at seeing the real deal, the actual tightrope-walker himself.

We weren’t prepared for the gripping suspense of the story, as Petit/Gordon-Levitt goes through  an amazing series of “wire-walks” in his native France, sneaking into closed-for-the-night circuses, entertaining passers-by on the streets of Paris.  Neither were we prepared for the spectacular and, frankly, eerie special effects of the film that spookily recreates the World Trade Center, up-close, constant, right there in front of you.

We know about blue-screen and all, but this work is altogether dizzying with verisimilitude. 

The big shocker is that this meticulous planning of a caper plays like a heist, and we are along for the prep, the setups, the disappointments, the last-minute reprieves, the heart-in-your-throat anxiety – will it work?

Hate to say it, but the Petit-gathered “accomplices” that Petit/Gordon-Levitt recruits to traverse the abyss of the 110-story towers gather undeniable force, aided by the masterful stars and the outrageous effects that create both the height and the depth of the now demolished Twin Towers.  There is compelling movie-making here, as the plan to wire-walk between the buildings is, of course, illegal, daunting, unheard of.  Crazy, sort of.  You really can’t figure out why anyone would do such a thing, even if his lifelong love is walking on wires without a safety belt – and without even the suggestion of pay.

Don’t know if others felt as unnerved by seeing the towers in the glimmering distance and immediately in our faces, remembering that they are no more.

Of course, there is no mention of the coming destruction of 9/11, as this was all done in the planks and wheelbarrow days of the WTC construction effort.  Back in 1973 and ’74, before the concept of al-Qaeda was even a speck in the eye of Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, or George W. Bush.

Not a swear word to be found, nor even a teeny sex scene.  (Two chaste kisses, okay.)  The focus is die-straight.  And despite our misgivings about the tragic future of the vaulting towers, it elicited round after round of applause at the final shot.  There are a few out of chronology fails we caught, but most people will miss them or won’t mind.  Even the doubters, like us, were wowed by the effort, the acting, the filming, the suspense, the dizzying strength of the effective and powerful 3D, which really makes you jump, cynical as you think you are.

Even kids can appreciate this goal-focused tale – and how often can you say that about adult films nowadays?

And “average”?  This is no average walk in the park.