Review: The Long Walk | Houston Press

Title: The Long Walk

Describe This Movie In One Gong Show Creator Quote:

CHUCK BARRIS: The ultimate game show would be one where the losing contestant was killed.

Brief Plot Synopsis: It’s a walk. And it’s long.

Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2.5 Scarfaces out of 5.

Tagline: “How far could you go?”

Better Tagline: “This new Klondike Bar campaign sucks.”

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Every year, a young man from each of the 50 states embarks on the Long Walk. The boys assembled this year include Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), Pete DeVries (David Jonsson), and Art Baker (Tut Nyuot), who form a friendship of sorts, which complicates the fact that there’s only one winner. Any Walker who drops below three miles an hour gets three warnings before their “ticket” is punched. The winner is basically granted a wish, and Garraty has plans for his.
“Critical” Analysis: Does dystopian fiction still work if we’re already living in a dystopia?

The alternative timeline The Long Walk is set in is no picnic. Perceived enemies of the state are taken from their homes and given a choice: service in the “Squads” or a bullet to the head. The postwar economy is in shambles, and the resident dictator (The Major, played un-memorably by Mark Hamill) promises to make the country number one again.

I trust none of this is disturbingly familiar.

Stephen King’s original novella was itself a barely veiled metaphor for Vietnam, written in reaction to the televised draft lottery, but the movie — while evidently set in the mirror universe1970s — reflects current events in other ways. Well-meaning people might say, “Society would never tolerate an event like this where young people are needlessly gunned down.” Some of those same people would still vote against regulating firearms even after kids were shot in a school or church.

Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, several of the Hunger Games…es) and screenwriter JT Mollner had to make some choices in adapting Stephen King’s story. They’ve truncated the number of kids from 100 to 50, for one, and removed many of the (meager) references to the wider world (shout out to Orange Julius).

As with most of King’s work, a fair bit gets lost in the translation from page to screen. Much of the novella takes place in Garraty’s head; thoughts of his girlfriend and mom, and loss, and patterns of life and death. It’s not very easy to shoehorn into a movie (or a miniseries, if the latest calamitous attempt to adapt The Stand is any indication).

And in going with fewer Walkers, certain characters are excluded, others merged (“lean Buddha” Stebbins gets Scramm’s pneumonia, for example). What hasn’t changed is DeVries’ role as Garraty’s garrulous companion, though Lawrence clearly didn’t have time for the character’s amateur theology). Jonsson is the high point here, as DeVries modulates the often hysterical Garraty and is given the most compelling backstory.

Hoffman, so disarming in Licorice Pizza, is fine here. But he isn’t a great fit for Garraty, even with the additional motivation Lawrence and Mollner give the character. However, they do delve into what we’ve probably all considered (at least I know I have): being the subjects of our own story. Bad things — tickets getting punched, etc. — happen to other people. The idea of being the principal protagonist has gotten more traction in the age of FPS games and online anonymity, but The Long Walk attempts to bring that unreality a little more immediacy.

The conundrum of how to consistently adapt Stephen King for the screen continues. Lawrence and company have condensed a meditation on mortality and the hopelessness of adolescence into a quest for vengeance.

The Long Walk is in theaters today.