The Long Walk (15)

In a bleak, future United States of America, 50 young men representing the different states enter an annual contest in which they must maintain a continuous walking speed of at least 3mph to stay alive. Slow down and they will be issued with a warning by a gun-toting soldier. Three warnings leads to immediate execution and the winner is the last person on their feet, who will be granted his heart's desire. Raymond Garraty begins the walk and forges bonds in perpetual motion.

LondonNet Film Review

The Long Walk (15) Film Review from LondonNet

A short friendship is better than no friendship. So says one doomed participant of The Long Walk, a futuristic endurance contest imagined by writer Stephen King in his 1979 novel, which invites 50 young men to compete for their heart’s desire in exchange for maintaining a consistent walking speed of 3mph and outlasting their rivals. It’s a physically gruelling ordeal with one winner and no finish line, designed to inspire a dystopian United States of America in the aftermath of war…

“This is walk or die – simple as that,” coolly explains competitor 23, Peter McVries (David Jonsson), as Francis Lawrence’s horribly compelling film gets into its stride. When a walker slows down, gun-toting soldiers controlled by The Major (Mark Hamill) issue a first verbal warning. If the boy fails to increase their speed back to 3mph within 10 seconds, a second rebuke is issued. A third transgression demands a bullet to the brain.

Screenwriter JT Mollner intersperses this arduous trek for survival and untold riches with flashbacks to a character’s traumatic past that succinctly explains his motivation for putting one weary foot in front of another for hundreds of miles (tracked using on-screen captions). Lawrence is well versed in the wilful destruction of young lives having previously directed all but one of The Hunger Games films. He confidently navigates the repetitious nature of the dramatic premise to milk droplets of stomach-knotting tension from unfortunate medical incidents and a lost shoe sole. Violence is strong, punctuated with graphic injury detail.

Competitor 47, Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), enters the walk to honour the memory of his late father (Josh Hamilton) and make his mother (Judy Greer) proud. Conscious that his fate depends on trekking through the night, Raymond forms a fragile alliance with Peter (Jonsson), whose honesty is unflinching: “I like you, but if you fall over, I won’t pick you up.”

They jokingly adopt the ‘one for all and one for all’ mantra of the Musketeers, surrounded by boys representing different American states, including Hank Olson (Ben Wang), Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Richard Harkness (Jordan Gonzalez) and Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer). While some competitors bond in perpetual motion, others provoke rivals into losing focus with fatal consequences.

The Long Walk is expertly paced at 108 minutes, eliminating the first boy from the competition in clinical fashion to open the bloodgates on explosions of gore. Hoffman and Jonsson deliver deeply moving, heart-on-sleeve performances that add flesh to the script’s bares bones characterisations. Lawrence and regular cinematographer Jo Willems artfully frame shots to focus on the reactions of the living while the fallen are dispatched in the background. Our imaginations bridge the divide considerably quicker than 3mph.

– Kim Hu