I'm not saying I'm ancient, but I'm old enough to have read The Bachman Books before Rage was excluded from the collection by Stephen King. It was a pretty great read. Four novellas written by Stephen King, under the name Richard Bachman, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The highlight was The Long Walk though, and it's something that fans of King's work wanted to see turned into a movie for decades. Here we are then, but is it any good?
The short answer to that is yes.
The premise is simple enough. America seems to have slid into some kind of horrible totalitarianism, with culture and free thought frowned upon as everyone struggles to make ends meet. This leaves many desperate enough to nominate themselves for a place in the annual event known as The Long Walk. The participants are all teenage boys, one from each state. All they have to do is walk at a constant speed of at least 3 miles per hour. That may sound okay to you, but they get three warnings if they fall below that speed, and then a bullet. There are no toilet breaks, no rest periods, no relief from pain, just walking. Always walking. Until there's only one left. The winner, who will receive a huge sum of money and one wish granted. Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) thinks he has a chance, and knows exactly what he wants his one wish to be. Peter McVries (David Jonsson) seems to be a good ally during the contest, but both young men need to remember that only one can survive to the end. Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) remembers this, and tries to goad others into wasting some of their energy, Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) looks like a very strong contender, and others trying to stay on their feet include Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Hank Olson (Ben Wang), Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), and Thomas Curley (Roman Griffin Davis).
Adapted from page to screen by JT Mollner, The Long Walk is directed well by Francis Lawrence (best known for helming a number of other movies about a deadly competition, a note that everyone is obliged to mention in any review of this film). There's only so much you can really do with the premise though. This is a film with a lot of conversations happening between people who are walking. It's punctuated by some sudden deaths, and those are sometimes delivered with maximum impact, but it's essentially a lot of walking and talking. Not great cinema, but still a great story nonetheless.
Lawrence has done himself a big favour with his casting. Hoffman does a fantastic job in his lead role, and Jonsson is almost equally good (if slightly hampered by the accent and occasional phrases that make him feel like he's mired in the bog of eternal King-isms). Plummer is even more hampered, but does well, and Wareing, Nyuot, Wang, and co. all do good work, especially when their full journey is shown via stages of physical and mental deterioration. Judy Greer has a couple of scenes that have her fretting over her son (Hoffman), something she does really well, and Mark Hamill is brilliantly cold and jingoistic as The Major, the military figurehead of The Long Walk and the one who will deliver the final shot before the winner is celebrated.
I did really like this, and it's been good to see many others reacting positively to it, but I can't judge it on purely technical aspects. I think at least some of my reaction stems from finally seeing ANY adaptation of the story in film form. The material is strong enough to make up for any minor failings, and maybe the fact that it is here for us in 2025 will help us avoid making a reality that comes all too close to this kind of fiction. Or maybe we're all just too tired and befuddled to do anything other than keep walking toward a depressingly bleak future.
8/10
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