«The Walk,» Zemeckis»
account of Phillippe Petit's 1974
tightrope walk between the Twin Towers
of the old World Trade Center, would seem to be the ultimate Zemeckis set piece, rivaling the awesomeness
of the plane crash and island sequences
of «Cast Away,» the upside - down jet maneuver in «Flight,» the intergalactic wormhole trips in «Contact,» and the small - scaled relentlessness
of the suspense sequences in his under - appreciated 2000 thriller «What Lies Beneath» (which wrung tremendous excitement from the question
of whether a nearly paralyzed woman could use her big toe to remove the stopper from a bathtub drain).