It’s the year of Stephen King, as evidenced by The Long Walk strutting into theaters. The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, and now this have hit theaters as King adaptations, with Glen Powell and Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man coming later this year to fill out the foursome. So far, it’s been a pretty good year for those adaptations, with The Long Walk succeeding both in adaptation and as its own work of fiction.
The Long Walk Review: A Masterclass in Balance
At some points during the brisk (and not because the characters are literally moving three miles per hour) runtime, The Long Walk is exceptionally hopeful, showcasing the humanity and companionship that’s housed within all of us, even the ones who seem to have lost that. At other points, it’s the bleakest thing you’ll see all year. It’s a phenomenal balancing act that manages to mostly avoid being tonally inconsistent.
You would not expect a movie with a scene involving a very young (so young he lied about his age to get into the walk) character being shot in the head to be so hopeful, but it is. The relationship between Cooper Hoffman’s Ray Garraty and David Jonsson’s Peter McVries helps carry this, because they provide the levity in the worst of times. At times, you’ll laugh out loud, which might seem out of place in such a bleak movie, but those are the most welcome moments, providing a break in the tension and something to smile about.
There are moments when they have deep, philosophical conversations about life, the world around them, and the desolate situation the boys all find themselves in. It’s these moments where you can see the optimism shine. Maybe, even in these impossibly desperate times, there is beauty and love and goodness.
Characters Get Their Moments
In King’s original novel, there are 100 characters, and some of them are left mostly unnamed and unreferred to. The choice for Francis Lawrence and JT Mollner’s adaptation to strip that down to 50 allows more characters to shine. There are some that are mostly inconsequential, but they all have names and they pretty much all have moments to shine.
This is especiallty true of the main cast of characters, which is surprisingly large. Hoffman’s Garraty, Jonsson’s McVries, Garrett Wareing’s Stebbins, Tut Nyuot’s Arthur Baker, Charlie Plummer’s Gary Barkovitch, and Ben Wang’s Hank Olson all get a lot of time in the limelight, especially for those who die. Each death is treated pretty reverently, too.
The Violence is a Bit Much
One of the only downsides is that the violence here is particularly violent. The first death serves as a reminder to the walkers that is is, as McVries so acutely puts it, “walk or die.” Until that moment, they’d all loosely knew it meant death, but it suddenly became real and an actual possibility for all of them. So in that sense, it is very appropriate that the first death is jarring and shocking.
The youngest character is shot in the head in pretty graphic detail, which surprises the characters as well as the audience. In that instant, the gratuitous nature makes sense. But in other deaths, it feels overdone. It’s hard to make a movie with such violence without showing it, but it also inadvertently glorifies the very thing it is seeking to condemn. That’s a fine line in any movie, and sometimes, the movie steps over the line (which would be an immediate gunshot for any long walker).
It Adapts, But Doesn’t Copy
For the most part, this is an exceptionally straightforward adaptation. It strips back some things and cuts out plenty of down time since we can’t see the walkers go over 300 miles in an hour and 48 minutes, but it hits most major points, keeps the character deaths consistent, and even has dialogue ripped from the page. But some characters are merged with others, and some backstories are moved around.
And then there’s the ending. The conclusion to the novel is very open-ended and abrupt, painting the picture that it’s really not about the destination but rather the journey. The ending is totally not open-ended in the movie, and it changes virtually everything. However, it works really well, illustrating the core message of the story and providing something shocking for those who’ve read the book.
Final Leg
The Long Walk is brutal, shocking, hopeful, funny, and thrilling. It’s thematically rich and relevant to our time, which is a sad but accurate statement about the world we live in. It’s no wonder Francis Lawrence, of The Hunger Games, was tabbed; he’s proving to be a master of the dystopia, providing a bleak outlook on life with a glimmer of hope, like the rainbow Pete and Ray see while on the long walk.
Score: 4.5/5
