Review: THE LONG WALK

 by Rob DiCristino

Should’ve called it The Boring Movie.

Stephen King stories are like eggs: Most of us have a dozen of them at home, and many of us live on them almost exclusively. Some of them are large. Some of them are small. Most of them are almost disconcertingly white. Their properties are simple — a bit of protein, a bit of fat (okay, sometimes a lot of fat) — but they’re deceptively tricky to work with. For every Misery or Doctor Sleep, there’s a Dreamcatcher or 1408. It takes a firm hand and a strong vision to nail the nuances, to turn their primal elements into something fresh and invigorating. That would make Frank Darabont and Mike Flanagan the chefs du cuisine, I suppose, the two filmmakers who bring reliable flavor to each of their adaptations. Everyone else is line-cooking it, at best, taking turns delivering under- or over-cooked dishes packed with gimmicks — the meat and cheese, to stretch an analogy already holding on for dear life — meant to distract from uninspired preparation. Does any of that make sense? Look, what I’m saying is that adapting Stephen King stories into movies is really hard.

Still, Hollywood shall not be deterred from churning out runny, unseasoned slop, which is as good an introduction as any to Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk. The Hunger Games franchise veteran returns to familiar territory, here, adapting King’s 1979 novel — originally published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym — about a dystopian United States in which dozens of young men compete yearly in a literal marathon of endurance. The rules are simple: The boys start walking, the last one left walking wins endless riches, and everyone else gets shot in the head. Ostensibly a morale-building exercise created to reinvigorate America’s dying sense of industry, The Long Walk is actually part of a larger effort by a totalitarian regime — personified by the Major (Mark Hamill) — to keep the unwashed masses compliant through propaganda and intimidation. While we’ll get to know each of our contestants in turn, we’re first introduced to Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), a corn-fed mamma’s boy who’s holding a mysterious grudge against the Major.

The affable Raymond quickly befriends Peter McVries (David Jonsson), Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), and Hank Olson (Ben Wang), forming a tight-knit posse built to lean on each other — often literally — over the next few hundred miles. Egged on by the Major and antagonized by other contestants like Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) and Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), our boys are determined to make the most of their bad lot. It’s classic Stephen King camaraderie for much of the early going, as the Musketeers — as they eventually dub themselves — sing songs, share rations, and try not to pee on each other while walking. Yes, with all the grace and nuance of an eighth grader learning to curse, The Long Walk happily explores the disgusting realities inherent in its premise: How are these guys supposed to take a shit, you wonder? They take a shit on the road! Yup! Right there on the road! Do they wipe? Sometimes! What if they get a Charley horse or sprain an ankle? What do you think? They either keep a steady pace of three miles per hour or get shot in the fucking head!

Speaking of which, all you freaks not satiated by scatalogical delights will be grateful to learn that the film is also chock-full of all the CGI blood splatters you could ever want. In fact, you can practically set your watch to them: A guy falls ill, trips, or is otherwise incapacitated. A soldier gives them warnings. The other boys cover their eyes. Boom, headshot. Over and over. In theory, this should raise the stakes; the receding number of contestants should feel like a noose tightening around the necks of those who remain. But the screenplay — penned by Strange Darling’s JT Mollner — isn’t anywhere near coherent enough to thread in those kinds of dramatic arcs, let alone bring them to satisfying conclusions. King’s original novel may have been an inspiration for Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, and a thousand others, but this Long Walk is a rancid, lifeless piece of screenwriting, a movie in which scenes could be played in any order and dialogue could be given to any character without changing the story’s outcome in any consequential way.

Narrative failings aside, The Long Walk is also a failure of wit and guile, the predictable result of a young adult director taking on material far beyond his stylistic abilities. Lawrence can paint in broad strokes of rebellion and revolution, sure, but neither he nor Mollner are competent enough to craft authentic human beings who can meaningfully interact with the story’s political subtext. The Long Walk is shocking, at times, but it’s not articulate enough to be truly bleak. We’d have to care about these people and this world for that to be the case, and while Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson — the latter of whom delivered Alien: Romulus’ standout performance — are charming actors, neither is able to give their character a coherent enough worldview to explain their erratic behavior. That may be a fault of editing, as The Long Walk has all the hallmarks of a film cut to shreds by uneasy distributors. If that’s the case, then I’d eagerly watch a cut with more depth, a more thoughtful and sophisticated cut that doesn’t feel like an aimless journey to nowhere at all.

The Long Walk hits U.S. theaters on Friday, September 12th.