The Long Walk <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>

The Long Walk

I had a bit of time to spare while the car was getting a service so I decided to visit the Greater Union Morley cinemas one last time (it closed a few days after I saw this). I think this was the first cinema I went to when I came back from Japan in 2016 and sadly, it hadn't had a touch up since then, possibly not for a long time before either. Fingers crossed for a brand spanking new cinema complex one day.

Anyway, the film I saw was The Long Walk, and it's a bit of an oddity. It's based on a Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) book from 1979. King seems to have a thing for these dystopian 'last one standing' stories (see also The Running Man, an Arnie adaptation was made in 1987, and Edgar Wright has a new version up his sleeve, opening soon).

Director Francis Lawrence returns to the theme of his Hunger Games films, riffing on Battle Royale, but also, many of these types of films where characters get picked off one by one, from Alien to Monty Python and the Holy Grail - sorry for the spoilers. For more depth, see 'Dwindling Party' courtesy of the TV Tropes site.

Aside from these story beats, the film is as bleak as fuck, originally being written as a Vietnam war allegory. The filmmakers have timed things well with the coming breakdown of the US - it doesn't seem so shocking when the first lad gets 'his ticket'. The creepiest bits are when the local onlookers watch the Long Walkers pass by their stretch of road, as though they're witnessing some kind of macabre Tour de France.

Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson as Garraty and McVries are really watchable, as are most of these desperate lads (keep an eye out for Jojo Rabbit, Roman Griffin Davis). Mark Hamill has a feast in his time on screen but the focus is on the young men, forced (but not really) into marching for productivity and sacrifice in the years after WWII.

This is a great example of character driving a film, rather than plot, and I found it to be game and worthy but without any real surprises. I've never read any King novels but have seen quite a few of his adaptations and this felt like a bitter, misanthropic version of Stand By Me. Now, 'bitter' and 'misanthropic' are usually right in my wheelhouse, but the format and handling of the story didn't knock me down.

[Side note: Essendon legend, Michael Long did his own 'The Long Walk' in 2004 from Melbourne to Canberra to raise awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues in Australia. Meeting John Howard at the end of it has a certain symmetry].

The Long Walk is playing at selected cinemas around Australia.

See also:

Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, Bryan Singer, Rob Reiner. That's quite a list of directors who have filmed Stephen King works but I'd say my favourite would have to be Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). And either wait for Glenn Powell later in the year or go back to the original The Running Man (1987), directed by Starsky himself, Paul Michael Glaser.

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