I had no real frame of reference going into The Long Walk, save for what I saw in the trailers.
From them, I discovered that it was based off of the Stephen King novel of the same name, starred Cooper Hoffman (son of the late, great actor Philip Seymour Hoffman) and David Jonsson (who wowed me with his performance in last year’s Alien: Romulus), and it revolved around a, well, long walk held every year in a dystopian America in which you’d win prize money and a wish if you won.
Oh, and that you were executed if you failed to maintain a speed of 3 miles per hour.
It was from these trailers that I decided to do some digging and found that the film was directed by none other than Francis Lawrence, who directed all of the Hunger Games sequel films, along with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Considering that franchise also dealt with teenagers being thrown into a harrowing situation that would result in their imminent demise, you couldn’t have picked a better person to helm The Long Walk.
And truth be told, I think Lawrence crushed it. This film is truly excellent.
I only ever seen Cooper Hoffman in one other film, being last year’s incredibly enjoyable Saturday Night, where he played TV executive Dick Ebersol. I found his performance to be solid, but nothing blowing me away in particular.
The Long Walk changed that.
Hoffman is amazing in this film. He gives his character, Ray Garraty, an innate likability and determination that helps you root for him, whilst also wonderfully selling the character’s desire for vengeance (no spoilers for this particular part). Additionally, there’s this innate malleability to Ray that Hoffman captures where you see the character’s willpower change in real time–understandable considering his circumstances–and you genuinely have no idea whether or not it’ll give out. It creates such a horrifying tension because there are so many times where Ray makes a choice that had me on the edge of my seat and worried for both his safety and his psyche.
As I mentioned earlier, David Jonsson previously impressed me in Alien: Romulus, where he played an android named Andy. He stole the show for me there, as Andy was a very sympathetic and kind-hearted character, with Jonsson performing that wonderfully.
Here, however, I am just floored by what Jonsson pulled off here. He plays Pete McVries, a haunted yet relentlessly optimistic young man who befriends Ray and forms a Musketeers-esque group with them and a few other characters. Pete takes part in the Long Walk for vastly different reasons than Ray, but it’s those reasons that help these two form such a deep and caring bond for each other. Jonsson’s performance imbues Pete with such a warmth and such a charm that makes it difficult to turn away whenever he’s onscreen, and there’s some truly powerful moments that work solely because of Jonsson.
He is clearly a star on the rise and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the future!
The world of The Long Walk is also a character in of itself, being a very bleak and desolate locale. Ray, Pete, and the other characters–such as Ray’s mother, Ginnie (Judy Greer)–are all suffering because of it. Through Ray, we get a sense that the Long Walk itself is nothing more than a cruel ploy to give others a false hope of a better tomorrow, and that it should be burned down with the rest of the system. Through Pete, however, the Long Walk is that, but it’s also something more: a testament to our resilience against insurmountable odds.
And that’s what I interpreted from the film’s story. On the surface, Ray’s views on the Walk are indeed the case, but I feel that Pete’s view of the Walk–and of life itself–is what the story is truly about. We as human beings can be put through the wringer time and time and time again, but we have this tenacity to our nature that is difficult to break. We can continue to live and fight for not just ourselves, but for those that we care about. We can forge bonds with others, whether just for a short period or over many, many years, and through trials and tribulations, those bonds can grow stronger and stronger.
It’s actually quite beautiful a message, despite the horrific circumstances in which it’s told.
If you’d like to read my shorter review on Letterboxd, you can click on the link down below. Thank you for reading!
Sources Used
The Long Walk by Richard Bachman | Goodreads
Alien: Romulus | Rotten Tomatoes
The Hunger Games In Order: How to Watch the Movies Chronologically | Rotten Tomatoes
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes | Rotten Tomatoes