An adaptation of Stephen King's "The Long Walk" likely would have been more effective a few decades ago, when the spectres of past wars loomed larger in the American collective memory. However, the film that finally did get made is one that could have only been made now, by director Francis Lawrence, after helming four "Hunger Games" movies that proved that there was an audience for movies about dystopian death games featuring children. However, none of the "Hunger Games" movies are anything close to as dark and violent and emotionally wrenching as "The Long Walk."
Set in a dystopian United States suffering deep poverty in the wake of a major war, we watch fifty young men and older teenagers participate in a yearly endurance contest where they walk until only one is left. If they fall below the speed of three miles per hour too many times, they are eliminated permanently. Contestants include Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), our major protagonist, Pete McVries (David Jonsson), who he becomes friends with, the troublemaker Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), unflappable Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and others played by Tut Nyot, Joshua Odjick, Ben Wang, and Jordan Gonzalez. Overseeing their progress and providing encouragement via megaphone is the Major (Mark Hamill), a grizzled representative of the totalitarian government.
This audience for this kind of movie is limited, naturally, so "The Long Walk" is a fairly low budget affair. There are no particularly showy effects sequences and the crowds of onlookers from the Stephen King story are largely absent. However, this allows "The Long Walk" a rare amount of freedom to be as graphic and vulgar and as unapologetically existential as it should be. The deaths are very explicit and realistically brutal. The walkers interact the way we expect a group of teenage boys to interact, conversing with constant profanity, crude humor, and slights against each other's masculinity. We watch them deal with every physical challenge, including how to urinate and defecate during the contest. But perhaps what's most surprising is that much of the movie is built on conversations that Ray and Pete have about their lives, the state of the world, and how to survive their ordeal both mentally and spiritually. The pace of the film is never slow, but it is very deliberate, with a lot of long, lingering shots, and resulting in a mood that is often more meditative than I was expecting.
It's strange to have to point out that "The Long Walk" is as much of a character drama as it is an action or horror picture, but this is probably the best major film about male camaraderie we've had in years. Despite being competitors, most of the kids in "The Long Walk" almost immediately band together to help and support each other, with only a few outliers. The deaths are horrible every time, and we see the boys risk their lives again and again to save each other, or try to stave off the inevitable. There's a particular timelessness to this version of the story, where the characters don't talk like modern American teenagers, but the behavior feels universal and very immediate. There are echoes of older war movies, naturally, since Stephen King originally wrote "The Long Walk" in the Vietnam War era, but the messages about young men dealing with violence and resistance and futility are still painfully relevant right now.
Those familiar with the original King story will notice that there are some changes, some small and some large. Some are just to make the story more filmable - slowing down the pace of the walkers, cutting down on the body horror, and reducing the number of participants. Some are far more substantive. Ray Garraty is given much more material, including a new character arc that might raise some eyebrows. However, as someone who has been waiting for this adaptation for a couple of decades now, I'm happy to report that none of the changes in any way tone down the content of the original story, and the adaptation is ultimately true to King's work in all the ways that matter.
Finally, the cast is excellent and the best reason to see the film. Hoffman and Jonsson are fantastic as the leads, but many of the most memorable kids are the ones in the minor roles. Judy Greer appears briefly as Garraty's mother, and adds so much. The earnestness of the characters and relative lack of satirical elements may feel old fashioned at times, but the performances are anything but. "The Long Walk" joins that very short list of projects that escaped development hell after far too long, and it turns out that it was worth the wait.
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