The film opens with Walter (Danny) driving his mother to the train station, where he will catch the city train to work. Walter loves to daydream, and is distracted from his mothers plans for his upcoming wedding by a billboard for 'Sea Drift' soap. He imagines himself, the brave, hardy sea captain at the helm of a sailing ship in a fierce storm. As we soon discover, all of Walter's dreams consist of Walter the hero saving the gorgeous and helpless Virginia Mayo in many different situations and environments. This time she's on the ship pleading for Walter to save them all.

Walter is so distracted by this daydream - remember he's still driving down the street - that he almost has an accident when arriving at the station. His mother berates him for his constant daydreaming, and gives him a long list of items she needs him to buy that day at lunchtime for tonights meal with his fiance and future mother in law. (It establishes that Walter is a bit of a mummys boy, he meekly agrees with that his mother says and obeys her every wish, however absentmindedly.)

Walter works at Pierce Publishing Company as a proofreader, and feeds the pidgeons on his window sill every morning. He gets to work bearing the watering can his mother had given him at the station to exchange, she thinks the holes are too small and the water doesn't come out right. Walter is late for a meeting, and not for the first time, we suspect. Walters boss has taken an idea of Walters and presented it as his own as Walter discovers when he gets into the meeting. Walter's idea is about Hospital Love Stories - Pierce publish dime novels filled with all sorts of fanciful situations, which don't help with Walters problem. He begins daydreaming about being a heroic doctor, Virginia Mayo is a nurse in this dream.

There is a reoccuring theme to each of Walter's dreams, the sound of 'tapoka tapoka tapoka' which accompanies every one of them in different ways. In the sea captain dream, tapoka was the sound the mast made, creaking in the wind. This time the tapoka comes from a machine in the operating room. Conveniently this machine is breaking down and only Danny/Walter can come up with a solution in order to save the patient whose life depends on it. He uses the items from his mothers shopping list to save the patient while fixing the machine long enough to do it, and again is hailed a hero.

The dream Walter is confident, cool, intelligent, brave, impetious, a natural leader and attractive to all women. In his dreams his life is enthralling and interesting. The real Walter is the complete opposite and lives a staid, conservative, predictable life, so it's no wonder he sat there in the meeting with a grin on his face as he daydreamt about the doctor, until his boss catches him in the act and yells at him.

That night Walter returns home with the shopping, but he's muddled up a few of the items and his mother yells at him about his daydreaming. This evening is very important, his fiance and her mother are coming for dinner. Walter goes upstairs and puts on some awful looking green aftershave that Gertrude, his fiance, had given him. It's obviously pretty bad, Gertrude asks him what horrid cologne he put on.

She has a poodle, Queenie, who hates Walter and tries to bite him any chance she gets. Gertrude fawns over the dog, insisting on it eating at the table with them, where the dog eyes and snarls at Walter during the meal. Walter's future mother in law pushes Walter around at dinner as much as his mother does, so he's glad to go downstairs and fire up the furnace when asked. While getting wood and paper for it, he spies an article about a fighter pilot, and is immediately thrust into a daydream where he is the brave pilot who has just returned from a successful mission - one suspects, this is during WW2 - with a broken arm, which he dismisses as 'merely a scratch'.

They need a man for another mission, which, naturally, Walter volunteers himself for, injured or not. Meanwhile some of the other chaps in his unit beg him to do his immitation of an old college professor. [This actually marks the first song in the film, 'Symphony for Unstrung Tongue', which is a tad too long a piece, if you ask me. Another fine Sylvia Fine piece.] Virginia plays a waitress in this one, lingering in the background to gaze adoringly at the big, brave pilot.

The next morning Walter sets off for work again, his mother shouting last second instructions as the train pulls away from the station. He sits next to the window, and is joined by Virginia Mayo. Walter is amazed, the girl of his dreams not only exists, she's sitting right next to him! As he marvels at this new development, she gets up to leave but spots a surly looking man at the end of the carriage so she quickly bends down to kiss and loudly bid him goodbye as though they know each other, and gets off. Walter gets off the train in Manhattan, still stunned, when he spots her getting into a taxi. He approaches her to ask what the scene in the train was all about, but she drags him in the car. The surly man is behind them, watching, and she keeps up the pretence until they drive away. What is going on?

Virginia's name is Rosalind Van Horn, and she is on her way to meet a boat, and asks him to come along with her to the pier. Walter climbs in and they're on their way when he realises that he's late for work and gets them to drop him off at work, but due to his routine being totally changed, leaves his briefcase in the taxi, so is forced to give chase. He gets to the pier and finds Rosalind after she has picked up a passenger from the boat. The passenger hides something in Walters case as Walter is helping the cabbie load the luggage. Someone reaches into the cab and kills the passenger, but Walter and the driver only notice an odd metallic flicking sound. They drive off, and only when the passenger falls to the floor dead do they realise he's been stabbed.

They drive to a police station, and Walter and Rosalind get out to notify the authorities, but Rosalind gets back in the cab. While Walter runs in shouting about a murder, the taxi takes off, and the police come outside to find no taxi, body or woman. The police think Walter is drunk and mock him. He sets off for work again, which he is really late for now.

The boss is waiting in Walters office (or is he stealing ideas again?) and screams at Walter for being late and his odd explanation of where he had been. This causes Walter to doubt his memory, and to think he was daydreaming again. His boss gives him murder stories to work on, which makes Walter even more nervous!

At lunchtime, Rosalind is waiting for Walter, to apologise for the morning. Her uncle told her to leave and then bring Walter to meet him. They drive off to his big house, and enter the study. Her uncle is wheelchair bound, he invites them to have some tea. He tells Walter that Walters life is in great danger, as he was there when the man was killed this morning. The uncle was a curator at a Museum during the war, and hid all the priceless works of art, noting their locations in a book the Nazis thought the murdered man had. Now The Boot is looking for the book, and he may think that Walter has it. (As well he does, it's the book the murdered man stuck in his case before he was killed.)

Walter has to do some shopping for his mother during his lunch, so takes his leave of Rosalind and heads back to the shops in the city. He takes out his diary to check the list of things his mother wanted, and starts reading out loud a list of paintings. It's the book! And that strange surly man from the train is in the store!

While tring to run from the stranger, he walks into a fashion show, and hides the book in some lingerie being sent to a customer, and escapes back to work. At his office building he hides in a stairwell, terrified, and hears a cleaning woman mounting the stairs some floors below. Convinced it's the Boot or that strange man coming to get him, he climbs out a window and crawls along a ledge into an office where his boss is stealing another idea. His boss yells at Walter for his method of entering a room and sends him into his own office. Walter tries to call Rosalind but another stranger enters, telling Walter he has a murder manuscript of the perfect crime, and Walter is so frazzled he again climbs out a window and back into another - his boss's. His boss was not impressed.

That evening Walter is home with his fiance, mother, future mother in law and a friend of Walters and Gertrudes, who is also keen on Gertrude. (Lord knows why, Gertrude is as pushy and domineering as her mother.) His friend gives Walter a trick book which explodes powder all over the person who opens it. Great, a practical joker. They are around to play cards, and Walter starts dreaming that he is Gaylord Mitty the Mississippi Gambler. He wins a game of poker, and the loser wages his fiance for another hand (he can't pay up the bet). The fiance is Virginia, of course. Gaylord beats the cheater and punches him for cheating and betting his fiance. He goes to Virginia who has heard about the bet and is disgusted with him, but Gaylord is merely there to give her her fathers farm deed back - again the hero who saves all the girls. He tells her he's off to fight in the war (the Civil War I think) but she says she'll wait for him. As Walter dreams this he tries showing off the imagined prowess with a deck of cards and ends up spraying them all over the table as his fiance and friend laugh at him.

The next day, Walter leaves work to find Rosalind in the lobby. He tells her he found the book and hid it, so they go off together to get it back. The man at the address some lingerie sent to isn't impressed with Walter banging on his door and demanding to see his wifes undergarments, and by the time Walter has knocked a few times, he's at the end of his tether. The delivery man from the department store arrives with the lingerie, knocks on the door and is knocked out by one angry husband who retreats, shouting at his wife. Walter and Rosalind realise the book isn't in this delivery, and return to the store.

Rosalind pretends to be a model so she can go out back and look for the box with the book. While she searches, Walter finds himself in the audience of a fashion show, and daydreams himself to be 'Anatole of Paris' and sings a wonderful song. He snaps out of his daydream as Rosalind shoves the book into his jacket to hide it, and they leave.

That evening Walter is getting ready for bed, and is undressing when the book falls on the bed. Gertrude and her mother are staying the night because of a fierce storm. Rosalind gets into the house via the kitchen, she needs that book no matter what the weather is. She plays a few notes on the piano to get Walters attention. It wakens Gertrude and her mother, who come out onto the landing to see what is going on. They catch Walter sneaking downstairs, and think he's mad - he claims he was playing the piano in order to help him sleep. Rosalind had put a kettle on and it begins to whistle so Walter quickly starts whistling to cover up the sound, and Gertrude tells her mother that her pal keeps proposing marriage, perhaps she made the wrong choice?

Walter takes the book down to Rosalind and they go see her uncle. But her uncle is not all he seems. Rosalind realises that he isn't her uncle, so she hides the book in a desk in his office as he tells Walter to give it to him. The uncles drugs Walter with a spiked drink as Rosalind flees - funnily enough now he can walk too. It's the Boot!

Walter wakes on a couch, 'uncle' is there with Walters mother and boss, claiming he has no niece or knowledge of what Walter claims has happened. He tells them that Walter broke in and that Walter is quite mad from anxiety. Walter breaks free and tries to run for it, but knocks himself out on a suit of armour. They take him to a psychiatrist - it's the man in Walters office who tried to push him out the window! The shrink pretends to treat Walter when Getrude, his mother and his pal show up. The shrink's main aim is to discover where the book went, and he tells Walter the daydreams are caused by the job he does. He plays mind games on Walter, telling him of another patient who saw everyone as though they were only wearing underwear, while his 'nurse' walks in clad only in underwear, so naturally Walter thinks he's imagining this as well!

When Walter leaves he daydreams again, this time that he's marrying Rosalind. he reaches into his pocket for the ring and comes up with a keyring Rosalind had given him earlier! It wasn't a dream, she's real! He dashes off to save her, and again daydreams along the way of being a cowboy there to save the town. 'Mitty the Kid' beats up the bad guys, saves Virginia but is snapped out of his dream by car horns - he's stopped at a green light in a daze. No time for dreaming, he has to save the real Rosalind!

The bad guys in real life are searching the house of the 'uncle' for the book. They let Walter in so he can lead them to the book - they hope. He finds Rosalind and they try to leave but are surrounded. They flee to the basement, and Walter tries a trick he read in one of the books he publishes about wiring a doorknob up to the electricity mains, then flees into a network of tunnels under the house. Rosalind gets caught by the bad guys and Walter ends up caught in his own trap by grabbing the wired doorknob.

Outside the police roll up. Walter hits one bad guy with a vase, and knocks another out, but the police charge in and think Walter's a nut gone mad. The Boot takes the book and runs for it, but Walter tackles him just as his boss walks in and sees the struggle - thinking Walter is attacking a defenseless man! Gertrude and her mother walk in and start calling Rosalind a jezebel for hanging around an engaged man and Walter's dream self finally enters the real self. He tells them all off, even his boss! Then he punches out his mate - who deserved it.

Next scene, some time later, his boss is finally showing he values Walter's work, and has made him Associate Editor. Meanwhile, Walter and Rosalind have gotten married! The End.

'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' is an amazing film, it has so many things happening in it, as you can see, and it's quite a gorgeous movie to watch, they've used high quality set and costumes. it's also a wild and funny story, with some great action sequences, including the daydreams. Well cast and directed beautifully, I think it's one of Danny's best films he ever made, and I give it five stars.