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The Long Walk movie review: One of Stephen King’s earliest novels, published in 1979 – considered unfilmable due to its stark, bleak story line – has been turned by director Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games) and screenwriter J T Mollner (Strange Darling) into a thing of almost-beauty and redemption.
Maybe it was meant to be now. Maybe there is no better moment to tell the story of an America gripped by despair, its heartland stripped of hope, its people consumed by violence served as spectacle. Maybe there is no better moment to talk about youth being told to “man up”. And maybe there is no better moment to talk about sacrifices demanded in the name of “country”.
In The Long Walk, the task before 50 youths, picked via an annual lottery from across America, is to walk and walk, at a speed never dropping below 3 miles per hour, for as long as it takes, till there is only one survivor left. The winner gets unimaginable riches, and one wish of his choice. Slack off, and you get three warnings, and a shot in the head. Need to pee or defecate? Do it walking, or time it, or get shot. Stray off the road, and you get shot. Doze off, and you get shot. Rain or sun, night or day, the 50 can’t stop.
What has brought them here is the lack of choice, in an America that has turned authoritarian after “19 years of war”, and where this long walk now is an annual event beamed live 24X7. The Major (Mark Hamill) running the walk tells the 20-somethings that their sweat and blood are the fuel that will make “America No. 1 in the world again”.
The film could have taken the easy way out by giving backstories to the half-a-dozen youths that it decides to focus on. But, it keeps the camera unwaveringly on them, capturing how the walk changes them – and how they change each other.
We get to know them alright, by their banter and their confidences. The stand-out performers are Cooper Hoffman (the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and David Jonsson (Industry), as Ray and Pete, who gravitate towards each other right at the start and develop a friendship that is entirely believable and moving.
But if Hoffman and Jonsson give The Long Walk its feet, there are others who give them worthy company down the 300-plus miles they trek, including Tut Nyuot as the religious Baker, Charlie Plummer as the unlikeable Barkovitch, Ben Wang as the jokey Olson, and Garrett Wareing as the mechanical Stebbins.
While the violence is graphic and the shots to the head unsparing, it’s what these youths talk about that helps them, and us, keep going. Pete, who is the cheerleader, lending his shoulders when the optimistic Ray starts losing it, tells the others to not lose sight of the beauty, the light. Pointing to a family sitting in the middle of nowhere and watching them go past, he says, “If you have lost belief in family, then what you do or achieve doesn’t matter.”
The Long Walk movie trailer:
As death snaps at their heels, Barkovitch, who confesses he has never had any real friends, and has not made one even in these last hours, wants Ray and Pete to take him in. “One needs some buddies in times like this.”
The Long Walk could have been a little shorter, and its tendency to fill its bleakest moments with such talk eventually trips it.
However, is the end really here? That’s what the film leaves you asking.
The Long Walk movie director: Francis Lawrence
The Long Walk movie cast: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Jordan Gonzalez, Josh Hamilton, Judy Greer, Mark Hamill.
The Long Walk movie rating: 4 stars
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