Though it doesn’t reach the melodramatic highs it aims to achieve, director Francis Lawrence’s “Long Walk” is nevertheless a tense, surprising dystopian drama that has nevertheless ingrained in a personal and national spirit. It is set in an alternative US, similar to the post-Vietnam era. Written in the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, Stephen King’s book was published in 1979 – the film follows dozens of young men drafted by lottery, broadcast on television both with their potential and the brutal removal from armed sales. The goal is to continue walking until only one man is left, and to win wishes and countless wealth from them.
The film charms at times with a terrible and terrifying thriller, but starts with an intimate drama of 20-something Ray Garrati (Cooper Hoffman), who says goodbye to his distraught mother, Ginny (Judy Grier), as she drops him off at the starting line for the 19th annual repetition of the fatal event. This militarized zone, which is nowhere to be found, hosts 49 young men across the country. Perhaps Alaska or Hawaii has never been recognized as a nation in this alternative reality, but this remains ambiguous in JT Molner’s script, as well as many details in the broader setting. However, the flaws in the world’s buildings tend to take the rear seats when the characters are formed in a very balanced and perfectly.
Before the walk begins, Gallaty meets the kind and stubborn Peter McVrees (David Johnson), the vibrant and religious Arthur Baker (TUT nyuot), the scrappy yapper Hank Olson (Ben Wang), and many others along the nerdy to Jock Juck spectrum. Participants are handed a dog tag to mark numbers before beginning a sleepless challenge, so if they fall below the 3-mile speed limit, soldiers can issue warnings to the megaphone. If you move slowly, stop too much, or leave the road, you risk a bullet in your head. Snapped between tanks and led by a ruthless, unknown major (Mark Hamill), the raucous group begins a long journey anywhere with the aim of being the last man. During this time, true concrete friendships are formed, but each feels destined.
Making a film with one type of action primarily – walking, in front of an audience with occasional gunshots rising up – presents a unique challenge, but Lawrence and film director Joe Willems meet aplomb. What’s rare is the moment when the “long walk” feels repeated, but almost every shot tracks backwards, capturing the awful participants head-on in a dark atmosphere. This is supposed to be largely focused on the characters in the film. It’s not the kind of work you can rely on traditional over-shoulder coverage, but you feel that each instance of framing and each bit of each bit of a character block (horizontal or between the background and foreground) is uniquely considered.
Violence is explicit and inevitable, and is always framed by realistically distraught reactions, as characters discuss more about fateful scenarios. Although technically spontaneous, this walk is just one aspect of a totalitarian state that seeks to appease the economically oppressed masses. And while we rarely get a glimpse into this outside world, it’s far from Lawrence’s four reality TV-inspired “The Hunger Games” movie. The relationship of a young man with that world and the place within it informs each of his perspectives and therefore the dynamics of each other.
Some of the men are more troubled and have anti-authoritarian stripes. Others simply crave cash. And while others, like McVries and Garraty, have more mysterious and esoteric motivations, it helps bring the film’s upset vibe back to the corner over its gradually exhausting day and night. “The Long Walk” is just as analogy about how fascism shapes people, perspectives and how their actions are, it is a film about a hopeless young man born into a world of national violence. This argument is multifaceted, but mutual admiration is cheered up and comes to mind through the philosophical conflict between the two major blooming vests of melancholy.
As Galati, Hoffman hides the animal’s resolve under his personality façade. But the emotional highlight of the film is McVrey’s fascinating concept, McVrey’s fascinating concept. A charismatic, scarred leader, compassion is the light of guidance, but it doesn’t come easily. Johnson is blessed with a kind of versatile expressive power that may be associated with Jim Carrey in the 90s, but rather than a rubber-faced comedy, his talents, like in his android role in “Alien: Romulus”), leads Hoffman and Johnson together, leading the film towards a heart that beating, through the issues that best approach the world when everything feels hopeless.
“The Long Walk” does not delve deep into the cruelty and anguish that is often hinted at, especially during moments of closure that lead to great emotional turmoil. These require a much more stringent theme focus to land, but leave too much in the imagination. But despite feeling open-ended (in a completely different way to King’s source material), the film is intriguing, if not overtly, for most of its runtime.
