Form 9/8/2025 press screening:
Walk or die. Such a simple concept, yet so scary.
Stephen King wrote this first novel when he was just 19 years old, gaining inspiration from the death march of young men to the Vietnam War. The film enlists director Francis Lawrence, who helms the now-famous "The Hunger Games" series. While "The Hunger Games" is much fancier and stylized, "The Long Walk" is bare-bones raw and real, even when the story is purely a work of fiction.
In a dystopian version of America, the country has fallen into a severe economic depression post-war. It's bleak and there's no way out. Every year, 50 teenage boys from 50 states, one representing each state, volunteer to submit their names in a lottery to be chosen for the long walk across the heartland of America. The walk is followed by armed soldiers in military vehicles, ready to shoot and kill. It's televised in order to somehow get people out of laziness and inspire them to get the country back to former glory prior to the war.
The Major (Mark Hamill) gives a twisted speech about how production has gone up after the end of each walk. Because anyone can win, and the winner would be provided untold riches and granted a wish, anything he wants. Notwithstanding the unspeakable fact that most of the boys would die, since there could only be one winner. Nobody, including local spectators across towns, questions why the 49 boys would have to die instead of simply losing and going home.
The rule is deadly straightforward. Walk three miles per hour until there's only one boy standing. If you fall below the limit, you will get a warning. After three warnings, you will be shot. If you go outside of the route or the sidewalk, you will be shot. If you have to slow down for whatever reason and cannot pick up your pace within 10 seconds, you will be shot after the third warning. There is no mercy. When the first shot rang out, the stake became unmistakably real.
Rain and wind, heat and cold, hunger and thirst, bodily function needs, leg cramp, nose bleed, broken shoes, deformed feet, injuries, illnesses, sheer exhaustion, losing of mind, provocation, infighting, attack and even suicide... none of these matters. They cannot stop walking. Days and nights blend in together. Hundreds of miles with no end in sight.
What started as a large group of boys in an inexplicably optimistic spirit with supportive camaraderie and humor turns into inevitable hopelessness and gut-wrenching horror, as one person after another gets shot or dies by other means. The cruel irony here is while some of them try to save their friends or those whom they've bonded with across the endless miles, in order to stop walking and win, every single one of them - except one - has to die.
While most of the boys remain unknown, there are some standouts and we get to know several of them based on their backstories or interactions with one another (Cooper Hoffman as Raymond Garraty, David Johnson as Peter McVries, Ben Wang as Hank Olson, Garrett Wareing as Stebbins).
The human elements keep the rinse-and-repeat story, along with some variations in actions, moving and engrossing. Although as engrossing as it is, it's hard not to look away during certain moments, as they are viscerally brutal and hard to watch. It's also hard to root for one boy over another, because it means you'd also be rooting for the rest to die.
There is no victory. While there's a winner from the race, the turn of events is not what you might expected and it's no cause for celebration.
"The Long Walk" is grueling and gripping, harrowing and terrorizing, mixed with humanity and spirit, familial bond and friendship, care and sacrifice.
