The Long Walk

Rating 2/10

In a war-ravaged, dystopian America, a brutal contest called The Long Walk is staged every year as entertainment and propaganda. Fifty boys, selected by lottery, must walk without stopping under the watch of armed soldiers. Anyone who falls behind for an extended period is executed. The last survivor is promised riches and a wish for anything he desires. The boys enter out of desperation: some lured by the promise of wealth, some hoping for glory, and others because they have no real options. As the miles stretch on, friendships form, rivalries flare, and the marchers confront the physical torment of the march and the bottomless cruelty of a system that forces them into it.

The dreary screenplay comes from JT Mollner (Strange Darling), adapting a 1979 novel by Stephen King, written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. It’s guided under the direction of Francis Lawrence, best known for The Hunger Games sequels, a filmmaker already well acquainted with American dystopias. The result, which depends more on ham-fisted allegory than authentic individuals, is hopelessly undone by the banality of routine. Occasionally, a crude spectacle is randomly inserted to break the monotony. For example, one unfortunate participant suffers a very public digestive collapse. The grotesque moment is shown in graphic detail.

The boys, each carrying their own surface backstory, spend most of their time trading empty chatter meant to sustain them through a life-or-death ordeal. Their dialogue so perfunctory that it’s little more than a series of clichés strung together to form a sentence. To compensate for the lack of substance, the script leans heavily on profanity, an unending barrage of curse words and blasphemies passing for grit but tips quickly into self-parody. (The official count of just the f-words, according to Wikipedia, is 280, but I’d wager it was double that.)

These characters never resemble anything that approximates an actual human being. They’re merely prefab archetypes lined up and showcased to be whittled down. Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) is the bland everyman, Peter McVries (David Jonsson) the moral compass, Hank Olson (Ben Wang ) the loyal sidekick, Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) the sneering troublemaker, Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot) the gentle innocent, Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) the chosen blue-eyed blonde, Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick) the hotheaded rebel, Richard Harkness (Jordan Gonzalez) the token writer, and Thomas Curley (Roman Griffin Davis) the first sacrifice. There are dozens more of these nonentities. However, the others are sketched even more thinly. Even the Major is a warmed-over cliché, with Mark Hamill rasping in a voice that sounds like he gargled razor blades in preparation for doing a bad impression of R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket.

The drama ostensibly aims to explore the human cost of a society built on violence and control. What it offers are flat stereotypes dutifully arranged to simply recite predictable exchanges. When Arthur, who is a Christian, believes his own walk is nearing its end, he tells his friends that he’s “going home.” Each young man mouths recycled conversation until the script finally lets the rifles ease them out of their misery. With so little humanity in the mix, every death lands not as a tragedy but as a sweet relief. Rejoice! For it’s one less droning voice in this long, joyless slog. The film grasps for meaning but delivers unintentional comedy instead. A grim parade solemnly lecturing one another until they’re blessedly gunned off the screen. By the end, you’re no longer cheering for a victor. You’re rooting for the final bullet that will put an end to this movie, the one true mercy it has to give.

09-18-25