The Long Walk review

What do you do when a race has no finish line? It’s this question that’s asked in The Long Walk. Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, this postwar dystopian thriller shows 50 young men competing to see who can walk the longest under the threat of death with the promise of untold riches and a wish granted.

Director Francis Lawrence takes you with these men one step after the other to show you how far a road they’d travel to get what they want. I’m reminded how amazing it is that a simple premise can leave you wondering what will happen next.

The violence is stark and sudden, contrasting with the even, steady pace they have to take to survive. More than once it’s difficult to watch. Everyone knows what they’re getting into and you see how far many of them are willing to go to reach the endless goal when the desperation sets in. People with a wish they want more than anything or those who simply have nothing to lose.

With how steady this film takes it, you need a good cast to carry the interactions in the slower moments. Thankfully, they do a good job of bringing the characters to life, like the two leads Peter McVries (played by David Jonsson) and Ray Garrett (played by Peter Hoffman) being endlessly watched by the army overseeing the walk, led by the Major (Mark Hamill).

The friendship of McVries and Garrett is a big part of what sells this but we get a lot of good performances from a cast who mesh well with each other. From the smart-aleck Olsen (Ben Wang) to some of the more reserved of the group like Collie (Joshua Odjick) and Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) who eventually meld into the friendship. While I do wish we got to see more of them since Peter and Ray are the primary focus, each has a moment I still remember after watching.

You’d think it’d be every man for himself with a race like this. Except for a few cases the players aren’t antagonistic, spending more time fighting the environment and exhaustion than each other, they have little to do but talk and bond. Despite them competing against each other nobody really wants to see each other die, so will help them go as long as possible until that person decides they can’t anymore. This is how most deaths go. Just filled with self-acceptance. There are very few moments of sabotage. This feeling of camaraderie helps the deaths feel all the more tragic and gives us a chance to see the actors fill in those gaps.

The Long Walk shows a group of young men pursuing their own goals out of desperation, with a lot of human interactions at the heart of it, bringing them together before tearing them away one by one.