Fifty boys walk in a
straight line at three miles per hour for as long as they can. If
they slow down or stop for too long, they’re shot dead. If they try
to escape or even step off the road, they’re shot dead. The last
boy walking wins untold riches and his heart’s desire.
It’s a grim premise
for a story, and slim basis for a film. Frankly, that Stephen King
managed to wring a novel out of it is impressive enough. The fact
that he was nineteen when he did so is even more impressive, although
it also explains a lot about the story, an angry adolescent polemic
against society. Long dismissed as unfilmable, The Long Walk has
actually been rattling round Development Hell for years, until
finally being picked up by Vertigo with Francis Lawrence as director.
It's probably going to
be my film of the year.
It’s one of the best
films I’ve seen in a long time, albeit one that I will probably
never watch again. It’s a harrowing experience as you are pulled
along with the young men as they trudge painfully on. There’s
levity there, but it’s gallows humour, the brutal laughing in the
face of misery that so many of us learn in order to survive. The
original 4 mph rule of the book was knocked down for being frankly
impossible, but even keeping up 3 mph for hundreds of miles without
rest is pretty unfeasible for all but the most immaculately trained
superhuman. (You just know there are some hypermasculine pricks in
the audience scoffing and insisting that they could win it.)
Cooper Hoffman is
excellent as the central protagonist Ray Garraty, perfectly cast as a
believable but damaged everyman, but it’s David Jonsson who really
steals the film as the resolutely optimistic Pete McVries. The
friendship between the two is the heart of the film, a friendship
built in the most unfriendly of circumstances. We see the best of
masculinity as well as the worst, with even the most unpleasant of
the walkers (that’ll be Charlie Plummer’s Barkovitch) being
sympathetic as we know they are all here out of desperation. Not one
of them truly grasps just how brutal the Walk is going to be, with
the possible exception of the stoic Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and
even he isn’t truly prepared for it.
Even with the novel’s
hundred walkers reduced to fifty, there are too many to fully focus
on. Tut Nyuot, Ben Wang and Joshua Odjick all give strong
performances as Baker, Olsen and Parker, respectively. Olsen, one of
the more unlikely contestants, is especially likeable, but in a way
that only drives home how unsuited he is for the gruelling challenge.
There’s an unpleasant complicity in the Walk from the audience,
spectating from comfort just like the gawping onlookers at the
roadside. The brutal Walk is fiction, of course, but the cast still
walked for miles in order to get realistic footage, with Hoffman
reporting that on some days they walked for up to fifteen miles in
the heat.
While King wrote and
seemingly set his novel in the 1970s, and the aesthetic of the time
has been carried over to the film, there’s no real indication of
when the film is set. This is to the film’s benefit, since the
themes are timeless and can’t be pinned down to one era. Many have
read an allegory for the Viet Nam War in the novel, and while there’s
a clear parallel between signing up for the Walk and volunteering for
military service (down to youngsters lying about their age to get
in), it’s a broader story of desperation and hope amongst
hopelessness.
Whenever it’s set,
The Long Walk occurs in some distorted alternative history,
where the USA has become a fascist dictatorship and undergone
economic collapse after an unspecified war devastated the nation. The
idea that it would take a war to inflict this on America is
laughable; given what you people actually voted for last year, a lot
of you practically volunteered for this dystopia to be delivered. As
outlandish as the idea of the Walk is, it’s also depressingly easy
to believe that it would be enacted, for inspiration or
entertainment, and that desperate souls would sign up for it even
knowing that it would almost certainly mean a painful death.
So much of the film is
spent just waiting for the inevitable, a chilling feeling that makes
it an uncomfortable yet compelling experience. None of it would work
were it not for the depth of the cast’s performances. While the
boys, particularly Garraty, are our way into this disturbing world,
it’s brought to life by Mark Hamill’s gloriously loathsome Major,
seemingly the head of the military junta in this reality and a
snarling figurehead for the oppressive regime. In contrast we have
the always wonderful yet still sadly underrated Judy Greer as Ray’s
mother Ginnie, who essentially represents all that is good and all
that is feminine and nurturing in this brutal state.
There are no punches
pulled in this film. Injuries and illness are depicted graphically;
there are no clean, screen-friendly gunshots here. Lawrence lingers
on the violence just long enough to feel repulsed before forcing us
to move on with the rest of the walkers. For all that the Walk is a
deliberately contrived kind of brutality, it’s none too far removed
from reality in the worst places on Earth. Right now, Palestinians
are being marched through Gaza for miles at gunpoint, while men and
boys have been forced to walk in front of tanks as human shields.
It’s disturbing to think that in Gaza, Sudan or Congo, young men
likely would sign up for a gruelling trek with a 1-in-50 likelihood
of survival if it meant a chance of escaping and providing for their
families.
The film marches along
with the boys with a crushing inevitability until we are left with
only two. The ending is somewhat predictable (although different to
the original ending in the book), yet this only makes the sense of
the inevitable more foreboding. Throughout, the cast force you to
care about the poor bastards you know you’re going to watch die.
And yet, like the best of King adaptations, The Long Walk has
an uplifting message at its core: to never give up and to go down
fighting.