EAT • SLEEP • REVIEW • REPEAT
THE LONG WALK
Director: Francis Lawrence
Writer: JT Mollner
Cast: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Ben Wang, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Mark Hamill
A grim, gruelling, highly affecting marathon of a movie.
I really don’t think you need me to tell you that Stephen King is quite the prolific writer. In a five decade-long career that stretches back to 1974’s ‘Carrie’, King has clocked up a mind-boggling back catalogue of novels, novellas, and short stories. In short, the man likes to write. I know, shocking, right?
More impressive even than the sheer frequency of his output is the extraordinary hit rate and high quality of it all, as well as the cultural cachet that King and his novels have garnered. Not only have his novels drawn heavily from the world around them, they have also gone on to influence popular culture and the wider societal conversation in a way that few other authors would dare even dream of.
If it’s proof you’re after of King’s influence on pop culture over the past half a century, then look no further than the sheer volume of big screen adaptations of his work there have been through the years. It’s been a steady stream for many decades now, one that has only gotten stronger of late.
Perhaps it’s a reflection of the times – and the world – we live in that the thirst for Stephen King has only gotten stronger, and in The Long Walk it feels like this cultural reflection has come to a head in the bleakest way possible.
In a dystopian, alternate-America ruled by a totalitarian regime, fifty teenage boys are selected to enter a deadly annual walking contest where the winner will be awarded untold riches and whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The game is simple: maintain a steady walking pace of three miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings, and you're out – permanently.
The list of Stephen King adaptations across both TV and film is far too long for a mere mortal to truly comprehend, and the end product has often been rather erratic at times, yet there’s been a real upswing in quality of late. There are still duds of course, however, the overall uptick in quality has been marked, thanks largely to the talent hired having a clear understanding of what makes a King story tick while possessing the drive, vision, and determination to make it succeed.
Going all the way back to Carrie, the very best adaptations of his work come from a fundamental understanding of their visceral simplicities and require a desire to play to these strengths. King knows how to scare. He’s made an absolute tonne of cash from it. However, more than that, he knows exactly what terror buttons to push in all of us and precisely when to do it.
While his books can often come laden with subtext and complexities, almost all of them can be boiled down to a single killer concept that latches directly onto our biggest fears, and if a film adaptation can tap into this without overloading things, you have something potent on your hands. Step forward (quite literally) The Long Walk.
Honestly, considering its one of King’s earliest novels, it’s rather surprising that it’s taken a full forty-six years for a big screen adaptation of The Long Walk to appear, however, considering the world it’s being released into, the timing couldn’t be any more pertinent. Stephen King films always seem to appear at particularly auspicious times, and this feels doubly the case with The Long Walk - a story that, despite being written when King was just seventeen, feels as astonishingly – and terrifyingly – relevant now as it did back then.
Possessing the killer Stephen King concept and a well-paced plot that will have you locked in throughout, there’s a lot going for The Long Walk; however, the film’s strongest (and most depressing) element is just how relevant it all feels at this given moment in time. Whether it’s the horrific rules of the walk, the dystopian police state setting, or the societal and economic manipulation of the young men competing in the “competition,” there’s something so hauntingly pertinent about the entire thing.
Like so much of Stephen King’s best work, the concept is a devilishly simple one that helps hammer home The Long Walk’s message in an easily digestible and terrifyingly explicit way. The walk which the fifty young men must endure may be a long one, yet the message is short, sharp, and speaks directly to the autocratic, Trumpian America we see before us today.
In stark contrast to the warm-hearted, kind natured, and deeply humanist The Life of Chuck (this year’s previous Stephen King adaptation) The Long Walk is very much from the startlingly bleak end of the King spectrum. It’s a corner of Stephen King’s back catalogue where the likes of The Mist reside and it’s certainly not for the faint hearted, however, what allows The Long Walk to cut through more than most is just how successfully it approaches its characters.
In what is essentially a feature-length walk-and-talk, we’re given ample time with a handful of the fifty teenage boys drafted into this hellish marathon, and it’s the kind of character time that’s crucial for the emotions to cut through the film’s thick, bleak, oppressive fog. While he may be working with Stephen King’s words, writer JT Mollner nevertheless does a fantastic job allowing The Long Walk’s key characters enough purchase within the script to make an indelible impression upon us.
As the various characters build both a rapport and a rivalry with one another along this long and desolate road, director Francis Lawrence handles it all remarkably comfortably, and in a way one might imagine the director of The Hunger Games to handle it. That said, while the setup may have some resemblance to its similarly themed teen-centric dystopian death competition predecessor, the end results feel poles apart.
Digging down deep into the dark heart of the source material and understanding it in a way that has eluded many Stephen King adaptation directors in the past, Lawrence does a sterling job of conveying the book’s heavy themes while giving it all a grand, cinematic personality all of its own.
Everything really benefits from the legwork put in to ensure the writing and characters land, and when the inevitable happens and the young men drop one by one, such commitment makes their untimely demise hit just that little bit harder. While of course some members of the male-dominated cast fade into the background and get popped off without a word, those that are pushed to the fore really make the most of their spotlight.
Regardless of their screen time (or lack thereof), every member of this ensemble do an exceptional job of getting their emotional hooks into us, either through conversation or actions, and while it would’ve been nice (yet obviously impossible) to have fifty fully fleshed out characters on offer, the balance feels right. Of the group, however, the spotlight is very much on the front two of Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson to deliver the emotional goods – and boy do they deliver.
With the always excellent (and often terrifying these days) Mark Hamill relentlessly barking in their faces from the side-lines, both Hoffman and Jonsson are absolutely superb at leading the line, very much acting as the heart and emotional focus of the story. Hoffman, like his father, manages to have a humble, emotionally fragile everyman presence about him, yet just under that brittle surface is a simmering ferocity that combine for a truly magnetic screen presence.
Of the front pairing, however, there can be no doubt that David Jonsson is the true standout. Switching from blithe and jovial to heart-breaking to outright rage and back again, often within the same scene, Jonsson’s portrayal of Peter McVries (#23) is a sight to behold and one of the key reasons for The Long Walk’s emotional resonance. From his big screen debut in Rye Lane to Alien: Romulus to where we see him with The Long Walk, Jonsson has had a remarkably rapid growth as a performer, and if his turn here is anything to go by, it’s about to pick up pace big time.
Going the distance with its gripping premise and backed up by a standout performance from David Jonsson, The Long Walk is a tense, horrifying, heart-breaking, highly pertinent, utterly compulsive viewing experience. Putting the legwork in with its characters, the script turns what could’ve been a pedestrian Stephen King adaptation into one of the author’s finest.
