The Long Walk

Bluesky

The Long Walk is the eponymous competition, and while there are more detailed rules that will be repeated as expository dialogue the main one is simple. Walk or die. Last man standing will win riches beyond imagining, and can make a wish. That seems almost magical, and despite a naturalistic tone that it shares with the source novella it's also allegorical, a fable for an age.

Stephen King wrote the book. Though not his first published, it was the first written. As with other frequently adapted authors there are balances to be struck between detail and tone. For every one that gets the vibes right there's one that doesn't want to shake things too much to avoid awakening monsters. King wrote this while still a student, and the echoes of Vietnam are heavy in its framing and construction.

Largely shot in Canada, after an unspecified 'war' that left 'the squads' in charge, the boys of The Long Walk will set out across a variety of landscapes. Pastoral, bucolic even, what's possibly a drunk driver burning by the roadside in the night has the air of a painting by Normal Rockwell or Edward Hopper. The cars are all late model American excess, exceptionalism with chrome fins, hungry for fuel and not yet guzzle-lean. The half-tracks of the story are replaced with a beetle-back Quad, outfitted with a pulpit for The Major to supervise. A grizzled Mark Hamill is their deliverance, exhorting them from the front while a convoy follows them. A steady pace of three miles an hour is checked by wristwatches with heavy metal cases but fabric straps. Their calculator displays are of an era, part of a production design only really undercut by lighting.

They will walk overnight. Over several nights in fact, at that gruelling pace. They will sleep, dream, bond, fight. That last is one of the reasons why a BBFC 15 rating is a surprise, there's a profusion of bad language that would perhaps historically have earned an 18 and somewhat undercuts more rebellious actions. Then there's the violence and injury detail, there's the inherent structural nature of this sacrificial ritual with the looming presence of an M109 self-propelled artillery gun clanking along behind and then there's repeated bloodshed. Those armoured cars that dog their steps are Ferrets, their turrets equipped with cameras and with troops from the squads riding their wheel arches. Its those 'carbines' that will deliver any number of fatal shots, graphic enough to leave jaws hanging open in shock and awe.

Director Francis Lawrence is no stranger to media murder, he's helmed the four Hunger Games films after the first, from Catching Fire to the further sequels and prequel. They've clearly had an influence on this presentation, though the echoes of King's work are felt there too. King was writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, the same nom de plume that gave us The Running Man. The nature of those competitions (up to and including Climbing For Dollars) has echoes of Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story The Lottery but there are enough literary precedents for book and film both to fill a map.

A large cast gives plenty of performances to single out, Cooper Hoffman and especially David Jonsson deserve plaudits. Garret Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer and Ben Wang are notable, but it hits the point that naming and numbering actors might constitute spoilers. The film does diverge from the book, following broadly the same path it changes the numbers in a few places. Speed, participants, the order of the fallen. All supported by sweat, blood, tears, the scatological and the profane. All sometimes undermined by decisions behind the camera.

JT Mollner has written an ongoing pursuit before. Strange Darling caught audiences in a way his début did not. There are few structural changes here, and even with the odd flashback it is relentlessly linear, Jo Willems often holding the camera close to the walkers and sometimes with a confusion of placement in the pedestrian peloton. There are two places at the end where technique causes issue. One dialogue in the rain feels like rewritten dialogue recorded after the fact, a naked restatement of moral in a film that's already stepped frequently into foot-slogging exposition. The ending, at night, in the city, could be hallucinatory or dream-like but instead just seems badly lit. As my companion for this film observed, in 2025 and with a cast this diverse it's not acceptable for actors of colour to be so poorly shot. That's a reality of production schedules, true, but the film makes a choice with all its freedoms and then doesn't pull it off.

It's a mis-step at the end that damages an otherwise compelling work. Notes about changes to the ending aren't, I think, justified, retreading to whine from sour grapes. Said film-going companion counts the book among their favourites, and we agreed that the changes are within the spirit if not the letter. That makes the fumbles at the finish all the more disappointing. The original can't but be read through the lens of Vietnam, pun intended. In making a not quite period piece the opportunity for new allegorical weight as with, say, Weapons, is wasted. They share a looming spectre in fact, another icon of both ages.

There are innumerable adaptations of King's work, this won't be the only one this year. The strongest take the ideas and pump blood through their veins and corridors, the weakest are a mixed bag of firing blanks, digital nonsense, or cocaine-fuelled commercial vehicles. Which I'm referring to shall be left as an exercise for the reader, not least as King is an author who's achieved significant commercial success with both his works and their screen versions. There's a constant back and forth for a writer who is close to a genre in and of himself. In that canon The Long Walk is on solid footing, and while it follows the route laid out closely it still shuffles in a few surprises. Its greatest strength is its ensemble cast. Its weakness is that the path trodden is well worn and sometimes shot unfairly. It's still worth following, but tread carefully.

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