There's 'heroic', and then there's 'scaling a building to single-handedly rescue a child dangling from a balcony' heroic.

22-year-old Malian man Mamoudou Gassama is rightly being hailed as a hero after footage of him saving a child from falling from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris has gone viral.

Gassama is being called a 'real-life Spider-Man' for his apparent ease at climbing up the apartment building to reach the child - scaling four storeys in just thirty seconds.

When asked by Le Parisien why he took such a huge risk, he said: "I did it because it's a child."

Hero.

Watch it below: