For decades, filmmakers have attempted to wrangle Stephen King’s “The Long Walk” — one of his earliest, bleakest novels — from page to screen. Published in 1979 under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, the story has a pared-down simplicity that has so far resisted visualization. Enter Francis Lawrence, whose love for the book and extensive experience with similarly dystopian material (he directed four films in “The Hunger Games” franchise) should have given him a head start.
So what went wrong? Set in a future America under postwar military rule, the movie follows 50 young men who have been chosen by lottery to enter the titular annual event. The rules are simple: Walk until you drop, at a pace not less than 3 mph. Should you stop or slow down — for, say, an inopportune seizure or extreme colonic distress — you will be allowed three warnings and then shot. The last man standing will receive unspecified riches and the granting of a single wish. By the end, viewers might feel more exhausted than the participants.
That’s because “The Long Walk,” despite the talents of the screenwriter JT Mollner and the cinematographer Jo Willems, is scantily characterized and barely cinematic. As the men trudge for days along an endless road, mercilessly goaded by a bullhorn-wielding, gravel-voiced overseer known as The Major (a nearly unrecognizable Mark Hamill), the movie becomes a wearying trek of tortured masculinity. One after another, the falterers are brutally dispatched; and though we’re introduced to a small group of secondary personalities — like the loner (Garrett Wareing), the comedian (Ben Wang) and the scary wild card (Charlie Plummer, entertainingly unhinged) — the movie’s moral center is the growing friendship between Pete McVries (David Jonsson) and Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman).
Male bonding, often in endearingly sappy ways, is at the heart of much of King’s writing. And Ray, soft of face and belly, is the perfect foil for Pete’s punchy energy. Yet they’re battling a screenplay that strains credulity. How is it possible to walk close to 350 miles without a single nap? (It isn’t, unless you’re an ultramarathoner like Dean Karnazes.) How do they have breath for all the talking and arguing and singing? (That everyone seems to know the lyrics to “Oh My Darling Clementine” is also mystifying, unless a vintage folk ballad about a drowned sweetie is our future national anthem.)
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The post ‘The Long Walk’ Review: Their Feet Are Killing Them appeared first on New York Times.
