“The Long Walk” is blood, gunshots, more blood and death. Over and over again. The film’s premise is simple: walk or die. But a muddy underfoot lurks beneath — a society impregnated by a draconian parasite that quickens the step, the heavy burden of memory that slows it and the call to brotherhood and home that stops it altogether.
Francis Lawrence (“Constantine”) is no stranger to shooting a dystopian landscape. He returns to the wastelands of “I Am Legend” and “The Hunger Games” in “The Long Walk,” achieving perhaps the grimmest adaptation of any Stephen King novel. First penned between 1966 and 1967, when King was only a freshman in college, “The Long Walk” sits within the context of the Vietnam War, a time when a military draft swept millions of young American men into the horrors of combat. This was an era marked by sacrifice and masculinity in conflict, fathers and sons divided and nationalism at odds with morality.
Both the novel and film open with the same scene: a car ride shared by Raymond “Ray” Garraty (Cooper Hoffman, “Licorice Pizza”) and his mother (Judy Greer, “Jurassic World”). Ginnie Garraty is driving her son to the starting line of The Long Walk: An annual competition in which 50 boys must maintain a walking speed of three miles per hour — a rule break punished by execution — until only one boy remains.
To amend a previous statement, Ginnie is effectively driving her son to his death.
Sitting in wait before their military escorts, the boys appear calm and resolute, save for a panicked few, revelling in their collective masculine triumph. The walk is the ultimate test of endurance — of being man enough — a trial you pass simply by participating, even in failure. In the words of the Major (Mark Hamill, “Star Wars: A New Hope”), a true manifestation of evil: “It takes heavy sack to sign up for this contest.” Hamill, who alters his voice beyond recognition for this role, brings an eccentricity to the Major that makes him entirely inaccessible and unpalatable. Lawrence frames the Major, eyes hidden behind thick, impenetrable sunglasses even in the night, as a man swallowed by grandeur and tyranny who arouses existential dread transcendent of acute fear.
The boys march to their deaths as willing sacrifices at his command, each of their own accord and each deceived by a totalitarian regime that promises salvation and glory. In return, this regime asks only for performances of bravery in the name of combating laziness. The Major offers a foreboding valediction: “For some, your heart will stop. For others, your brain. And the blood will flow suddenly. There’s one winner and no finish line.” And so, doom plants itself to stay for The Long Walk.
Enter Peter McVries (David Jonsson, “Alien: Romulus”): strong-willed in both constitution and spirit, charm pulsing through his veins and the wisest of them all. Peter and Ray form a bond of mutual respect, affection and shared trauma — holding each other up physically and emotionally. Jonsson and Hoffman both deliver standout performances, their on-screen collaboration reminiscent of the representations of male intimacy found in “Stand By Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“The Long Walk” finds its strength in its characters — each assuming a unique nature with verisimilitude worthy of empathy. The common thread of humanity that connects each young man to one another, and each of us to them, eclipses the natural necessity of moral decay in this pressure cooker of survival.
Lawrence treats each boy with gentle tolerance, the camera taking in their sharp edges and hardened dispositions with a knowing, tender eye. As time drags on like a broken limb on gravel, we grow fond of each boy and dread their cries of pain, pleadings for mercy and deaths with painful anticipation. We spend nearly 120 minutes watching them walk, finding ourselves searching for emotion in posture, gait and the eyes. It is their faces and frames that become the landscape, ones we part with mournfully. Paired with an understated score composed by Jeremiah Fraites (“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”) with metronomic pizzicato akin to the clicking of a telegraph, “The Long Walk” is minimalistic in all but gore. It is this minimalism that allows poignancy to soar, weight to build and mystery to leave the audience in the dark — just where Lawrence wants us.
Near the end of the film, civilians gather in crowds to spectate when only two boys remain, hoping to catch a glimpse of the final kill and the crowning of the winner. They cheer at the eventual bloody headshot, celebrating as a boy lies on his stomach, the rain pummeling his dead body, his last words for his mother.
A question will inevitably enter your mind as you watch “The Long Walk.” Would I survive? How long would I last before my legs give out or my lungs fill with fluid? But the question of “The Long Walk” is not one of physical endurance; it is, rather, one of human nature. We see, in this dystopian world, an impoverished civilization desensitized to violence and unflinchingly obedient to a system blinded by fantasies of eternal power reserved for the ruling class. We witness 50 young men compete with their lives in the name of honor before a national audience, all but one of them suffering death without dignity. We witness the same young men, at first unwavering in their efforts, experience horror and grief at the deaths of their competitors — competitors who soon became companions, and even brothers.
When Ray expresses his disgust for the onlookers, calling them animals, Peter reminds him that their voluntary participation in The Long Walk makes them just as ugly and inhuman. Earlier in the film, Ray insists that The Long Walk isn’t a voluntary act at all. The contestants are drawn from a lottery of eligible “volunteers,” but Ray doesn’t know of a single boy who did not apply. The prize money offers liberation from destitution, an escape that this society is desperate for despite its dangers. The near-certain risk of death is a mere whisper to the loud appeal of a livable existence. Ray, who perceives his complacency as a revolutionary act, points out this illusion of choice that extends beyond The Long Walk and exists within the entire society. The spectators and the participants all perpetuate a system of winners and losers, one where human rights must be earned and ritualized murder is celebrated as patriotism.
Believe it or not, the film is less nihilistic than King’s novel. Lawrence outdoes the “King of Horror” by attempting to answer the question of humanity in “The Long Walk,” a question King answers rather ambiguously in his writing. Winning becomes much less about walking away with your life, and far more about what constitutes a life as valuable and a death as meaningful. Vengeance and love are both central themes to Lawrence’s film, and the paradox of their simultaneous existence guides the sense he attempts to make of this bleak existence.
“The Long Walk” imagines a world much like our own. It is one of winners and losers. One ravaged by poverty and heavy censorship. One where we move forward endlessly, an invisible goal always a step out of reach. We gain on nothing, regressing in our futile attempts at progress. We walk with no end in sight until the soles of our feet are raw and swollen.
We walk still.
Daily Arts Writer Maya Ruder can be reached at mayarud@umich.edu.
