The Long Walk
The Long Walk (2025)
Image From IMDB
While I loved the concept, this on paper seemed like an unfilmable movie. But, much to Francis Lawrence and the casts credit, they made a superb film, which also has me excited to read the book in the near future.
The Long Walk is set in a dystopian future where once a year a group of fifty teenage boys set out on a deadly walk across America. They have to maintain a constant pace, and keep walking until only one of them remains. The others are all shot dead as they stop, or fall behind, and are thanked for their sacrifice (The greater good). Its winner takes all, and no prizes for second place, which becomes even cruller as friendships are formed on the Long Walk.
It’s like the nastiest version of Before Sunrise imaginable. Before Sunrise meets The Road would be my elevator pitch (if they still exist) I imagine a young Richard Linklater reading the Stephen King novel and thinking what a lovely book this could have been without all the death, violence, and dystopian nightmare. Why not set it in Vienna instead and make it about a couple.
The Long Road felt like a throwback in a lot of ways. It was about real things, without being preachy. It was a coming-of-age story, with no happily ever after. It was a story of friendship, bonds, grit and determination. About going beyond the realms of human endurance. Pushing yourself to survive, because the alternative is death. It felt very poignant in a world where we tend to have either instance gratification or misery. It was a great many things along their Long Walk, and the camera stayed on the group the entire time so we could hear the conversations and see the friendships forming.
This type of film simply isn’t possible without incredible performances, and they were everywhere. Every single actor delivered, with David Jonnson excelling as Peter, and Cooper Hoffman bringing all the emotion as Raymond. Maybe the best buddy performance I've seen in a long long time. But honesty, everyone played their part, and this film should pick up plenty of awards on that front.
The direction was flawless too. Lawrence never lost sight of the story and the kids. He barely left their side, attaching the camera to their entire walk rather than getting distracted with any dystopian world building. The building instead was in the dialogue, and the snippets of landscape we saw, rather than big diversions across this future nightmarish America. It would have been so easy to cut together dystopian montages, but he reframed, and it’s a much stronger movie for that.
I was really impressed with this one. I like the idea a lot, but I didn’t think it could be done as confidently as it was. Having not read the book yet I can’t say how well they stuck to the source material, but this version of it was handled with a lot of skill and grace. It’s brutal. Extremely violent, and so incredibly cruel. But, there’s also friendship and loads of humour. Some of those laughs come at awkward times, when you really don’t want to laugh, but isn’t that life… and that’s exactly what The Long Walk is truly about… Getting through the many many ups and down’s of life.
