The Long Walk is based on one of the stories found in The Bachman Books by Stephen King (using his now-famous pen name, Richard Bachman) that I found endlessly fascinating… and way ahead of its time. I came to it nine years after its debut in 1979 and wondered what would have to happen to make this story possible, set in a dystopian version of the United States where a totalitarian regime controls everything. King wrote of 100 teenage boys competing for “The Prize”—described in the novel’s closing paragraphs as “first wish, every wish, any wish, death wish.” All they have to do is walk for it, but there’s a catch: Death by firing squad if you break the rules three times. (Or instantly, if certain rules are broken.)
Of course, in the usual King way, exaggerated personalities jive and clash, magnified and seared into our memories by the pressure of The Long Walk, both in the physical act of walking and the military personnel waiting for Walkers who interfere with them, fall behind the 3 mph pace, go off-track, or stop walking. Warnings can be sloughed off—one per hour after the last warning given—but when the guns come out after the third warning and the grace period’s over… It’s a guarantee that 99 boys will die, and it’s almost certain that the “winner” will have serious mental issues afterward.
Director Francis Lawrence—who’s helmed several adaptations of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games books, themselves about to-the-death competitions—and screenwriter JT Mollner have cooked up a frightening filmed vision of King’s novel. Bearing a cast who takes this plot as deathly serious as King’s characters do in the book, Lawrence’s The Long Walk whittles the 100 contestants down to 50 (one representative from each state), simplifying the story’s interpersonal connections and metaphors to its singular driving purpose: Walk or die, as it says on the posters. Mollner’s also included several new changes (by addition or omission) that make both the film and its base story impossible to forget, amplifying its impact and casting new shades on this 46-year-old novel.
Halving the number of contestants automatically shortens the length of the Walk and limits the film’s need to expose us to every character, which neither the film nor the book does. Most fall by the wayside without identification, either by name or description, thus limiting our scope to a small core of Walkers made up of Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), Peter McVries (David Jonsson), Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), Hank Olson (Ben Wang), and Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick). Let’s not forget The Major (Mark Hamill), the overseer of this ghastly contest who, in each appearance, bloviates about the hope the Walkers, this competition, and their impending deaths—save one—are going to give a post-war, depleted United States. The lone victor symbolizes the prosperity that the country can achieve with hard work and the go-get-‘em spirit that The Major keeps going on about, the ultimate spin on an event where the herd is thinned ever so slightly, thus creating less of a drain on society.
This book has been fascinating to me over the years, and the film serves as a perfect companion piece to it. While Mark Hamill, Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Ben Wang, Tut Nyuot, Joshua Odjick, and Charlie Plummer are miles from the characters I’d formed in my head ever since I read first read the story in 1988, they certainly give their all to who their characters are, how they move, what they say, and how they fit into the grander scheme. Every Walker is afraid of the guns pointing at them and what it means if they get three warnings, and these actors project their circumstances—both personal and as a group—with fierce authority, even if Mollner’s script doesn’t quite go to the lengths King does to establish them as people other than just the number that identifies them. But that’s okay; there’s no way all of King’s details could fit into a movie without losing focus, and Mollner’s character development choices thankfully leave the actors room to make definitions that bind us closer to them. Mollner gives us just enough to know about each Walker and The Major all throughout, tightly tying everyone and everything together in this state-run death spiral that sees the best and worst of humanity.
The Four Musketeers, comprising Garraty, McVries, Baker, and Olson, are our windows into this world, each with a distinct backstory, game plan, purpose, and reason for being there. Not one has made the decision frivolously, and their dire situation—and that of the country—gets reflected in their completely voluntary choice to be part of The Long Walk. So desperate are times that people would sign up to potentially be murdered for the chance to rise above their stations; jobs aren’t mentioned, and the small towns they pass are mostly boarded up and deserted. The specter of the “Squads” and their punishments for not toeing the line keeps people in fear and underfoot. Lawrence never once shows any sign of the wealthy or well-to-do, keeping the fantasy of The Prize mythic and out of reach, just another pipe dream for the Walkers to salivate over while walking themselves to death.
Current society has seen competition shows like this that fall just short of the ends found in The Long Walk. We’ve seen it in our businesses and our homes; our everyday lives are full of this general feeling that we’re all in it together, but not exactly working together for our unseen higher-ups. Every action we take is scrutinized, running afoul of those who judge and try to get ahead at others’ expense. Success can only come after one has debased oneself or prostrated to the threat of harm, not for any higher purpose. This film makes it clear that we are all on our own Long Walk, surrounded by those who help and those who hurt; we can choose to fight or we can choose to surrender, but in the end, the guns will come for us. Even the film’s conclusion is ambiguous as to what the true outcome is for the victor, no matter what his actions over the course of the movie have entailed.
Our main duo, Garraty and McVries, come at The Long Walk from different backgrounds and purposes, but Lawrence and Mollner position them as brothers fighting together. Editor Mark Yoshikawa permits us unfettered glimpses into their Walk-long friendship, letting takes go on at length to include us in their discussions to let us know what they truly mean to us and each other. Garraty’s a kid with serious baggage driving his want—nay, need to be in The Long Walk, while McVries epitomizes the “nothing to lose, everything to gain” maxim we pump ourselves up with when making hard choices. To us, a “hard choice” might be asking someone out, trying out for a play, or putting a few chips on the roulette table; to them, the “hard choice” might be passing food rations to a hungry co-competitor or holding someone back while the guns eliminate a friendly Walker. Both Hoffman and Jonsson excel at drawing us into this bleak world and showing us some light, whether through anger or compassion, goodwill or malice, brotherhood or antagonism.
The Long Walk reveals as much about its competition and competitors as it does our own selves, locked in a game with only one outcome; how long it lasts is entirely up to each participant. Equal parts beautiful and abjectly haunting, the movie is unrestrained in showing the desperate going up against certain death. Courage isn’t a factor in this, as it asks you to witness people who’ve been pushed to make the most insane choice: Walk to riches and freedom or die. The choice has been made; all that’s left to do is wait and see who’s going to help, hinder, fall to injury, succumb to madness, drop out from fatigue, or win. Just like life itself, we’re all waiting to see what becomes of us and those we’ve chosen to be part of our lives; The Long Walk is a strange and alarming reflection of us and what we hold dear, unafraid to go where it must to retain its humanity in the face of inhumanity.
