The early novels written by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman were mean, nasty, and bleak, none more so than The Long Walk, the first book the author wrote (even if it wasn’t published until 1979).
King’s dystopian nightmare paints a grim portrait of an America in which suffering is sport and death is entertainment, and in the years since its debut, its influence has crept into various nooks and crannies of global pop culture. Trace elements of its tale about a marathon waged by kids for TV audiences can be found in everything from Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale and Netflix’s Squid Game to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.
It’s the director of that franchise’s past five installments, Francis Lawrence, who assumes behind-the-camera duties for Lionsgate’s adaptation of King’s seminal tome, which hits theaters Sept. 12. It’s a smart marriage of artist and material that brings things full circle.
Following a car ride laced with sorrow and terror, Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) is dropped off by his mother (Judy Greer) at the starting line for the Long Walk, an annual competition (now in its 19th year, and televised live) in which 50 young men—winners of a domestic lottery—trek through day and night, sunshine and storms, until one remains standing.
As is laid out by the ringleader of this horrible national spectacle, a cold-blooded military commander known as the Major (Mark Hamill), the rules are simple: Contestants must at all times stay on course and maintain a 3 mph pace, and violations result in warnings. When three such notices are received, walkers earn their “ticket”—a euphemism for a bullet to the head courtesy of one of the anonymous armed soldiers who accompany the boys (on foot and aboard tanks) on their journey. To the lucky individual who outlasts his compatriots, a prize of untold riches and a single wish (whatever their heart desires) awaits.
With its draft and senseless death, King’s original has often been read as an allegory for the Vietnam War. Lawrence’s film sets itself in an unspecified period whose cars, technology, and attire recall the ’70s, but it makes no nods toward that conflict.
Nevertheless, its vision of a United States wracked by war, economic hardship, and authoritarianism packs a haunting allegorical punch. Written by Strange Darling’s JT Mollner, The Long Walk means to push timely buttons, and push them it does as its characters embark on their odyssey down stretches of highway that cut through the expansive fields, farms, and woodland areas of rural Maine, the state from which Raymond hails—making him, as demonstrated by a young girl cheering him on from the sidelines, the hometown favorite.
If Raymond is more familiar with this area than his comrades, such knowledge provides scant advantage. The Long Walk is a war of attrition fought by young men who, it becomes clear via their ambling conversations, are willingly partaking in this death march.
In one of its main departures from its source, The Long Walk has Raymond expound upon this phenomenon, telling his comrades that because every single American boy plays the lottery, they haven’t really made a choice; rather, they’ve all been conditioned by a despotic regime to buy into the spectacle and its supposed purpose: to inspire the country to improve its work ethic so it can regain its economic supremacy.
In that regard, the film casts itself as a frightening saga about tyranny’s capacity to acclimate its subjects to slaughter and slavery, and to coerce them into performing (and celebrating) self-destruction under the guise of unity, strength, and progress.
Those ideas give The Long Walk its heft, whereas Raymond lends it its heart thanks to his budding rapport with Peter McVries (David Jonsson), a gregarious walker who quickly becomes his partner and confidant. Hoffman and Jonsson’s unaffected and engaging rapport is the lynchpin of this dirge, and it matures affectingly as they confront the various obstacles in their way: heat, rain, hunger, bowel movements, worn-out shoes, exhaustion, insanity, and despair.
They’re not alone in their fight, and be it the cocky and muscular Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), the jokey and mouthy Hank Olsen (Ben Wang), the amiable and devout Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), or the smug and antagonistic Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer, embodying a prototype of King cretins to come), the film thrives on the backs of its distinctive players, most of whom are destined to find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.
There’s no upside to these boys helping each other, yet unofficial alliances soon form between them, the closest of which is shared by Raymond and Peter, despite their differing reasons for joining the Long Walk and their contrasting plans for their wish.
Although the film unimaginatively repeats its signature image of a desperate boy, out of focus in the background, being shot as Raymond and Peter continue trudging along, their faces tormented to the point of insanity, Lawrence’s imagery has a stark, morose beauty. Additionally, his version strays from King’s path by both giving Raymond a concrete motivation for volunteering for this ordeal, and by concluding on a somewhat more conventional, and superficially satisfying, note.
Nonetheless, beneath the surface of that reconfigured climax lies King’s bedrock pessimism about triumph in a world ruined beyond repair. It isn’t as crushingly desolate as the ending of Frank Darabont’s The Mist (which also deviated from King’s novel), but it offers little consolation or optimism about the prospects for escaping the lethal traps of totalitarianism.
That’s not to say, however, that there’s no hope in The Long Walk. As they walk, Raymond and Peter come to see each other as figurative siblings bonded by their desire to affect change through their own (sacrificial) agony. With the Major blaring pitiless encouragement through a megaphone like the worst father figure in American history—Hamill’s gritty performance casts the villain as a sadistic General George S. Patton—these strangers encourage, assist, and emotionally and physically sustain each other.
Their friendship is a rebuke to the ruthless individualism of the Long Walk, and a demonstration of humanity in the face of a deeply inhuman contest and system. Liberation may ultimately be a dream too big for these boys, but in their final actions, they prove that the greatest bulwark against oppression is brotherhood.
