When you combine the director of most of “The Hunger Games” series, a novel by Stephen King and two of the most popular emerging talents of Hollywood, a lot of space is created for something good to come out of it, and this film achieved just that.
“The Long Walk,” directed by Francis Lawrence, is a dystopian survival film based in a authoritarian 1970s American regime, where every year an event of who can walk the longest is televised to increase morale of the average worker in a rough war affected the country.
This would not be anything special if the stakes weren’t high, so every time someone lowers their speed from three miles per hour, a warning is issued. After three warnings are issued, the contestant will be shot and left to die in the middle of the road, while all other participants continue to walk until they are the last ones standing. This “show” is hosted by a Major, surprisingly played by Mark Hamill, and shows the power a dictator can achieve by controlling both force and money.
We start the film seeing our protagonist Raymond Garraty, played by Cooper Hoffman, getting ready for this competition and his mom strongly discouraging him from attending. When arriving at the competition, we meet our main cast and who we are going to see slowly diminishes into only one. Alongside Olson, Stebbins and Barkovitch, who are some of the most focused individuals of the group of 50, Peter McVries is by far the most iconic and receives the largest screentime. McVries, played by David Jonsson, shows once again the raw star power he holds. From “Alien Romulus” to “Rye Lane” and now “The Long Walk,” we are seeing a future A-Lister on the making and his performance here is too impressive and emotional, creating a character with a very strong morale who helps most of the characters in cast but also questions their values.
The winner of this competition, apart from a hefty amount of money, gets one wish, whatever they want. Here is where most of the emotional part is focused, where McVries and Garraty have two different outcomes they wish to have and argue about if vengeance or love is better to avenge a lost one, as well as the power of forgiving. The film establishes itself as a conversation focused film, where most of the scenes are just our characters talking while wearing their feet down to the bone, and thankfully the cast does a great job at showing this emotional vulnerability.
While the film only runs at a shorter time of 1 hour and 40 minutes, it makes for a very easily digestible film, with good pacing and not allowing any feeling of filler between scenes. As mentioned already, the decision of implementing such a government is a very strong political statement and nothing else could have been expected from the director of most of “The Hunger Games,” but my only wish would have been to get into more depth of either some of our characters competing or even better, the major and the current America we are at in the film, if even for a few couple of minutes. Even with this small issue, the film is great and becomes another good Stephen King’s adaptation while keeping it as an entertaining watch.
The Long Walk is now available on streaming, and I recommend it to anyone reading.
