Review of The Long Walk, directed by Francis Lawrence

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

When I do end up watching movies, I try to go for things that I’m generally really excited about. It helps to have something that I really want to watch at the end of the day because if I don’t, then I’m less likely to actually sit down and watch the movie.

This leads me to a different confession: I’ve never actually read a Stephen King novel. I had to read On Writing when I was attending a magnet school for writing, as we were on the semester where we were talking about the processes of writing and what historical writers were doing with their creativity. I never forgot King describing how he never remembered writing most of his early work because of the drugs.

But whenever a movie adaptation comes out of his work, I tend to try and watch it if I have the time. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I missed The Long Walk when it was in theaters, but I was interested enough in seeing it that I ended up renting it on Amazon when it was on sale there.

Let’s get into the review!

In a dystopian United States, young boys are recruited for a walking journey, but they are shot and killed if they stop walking or don’t keep an even pace.

This movie takes place in an alternate universe in the 1900s, one where the United States goes through a brutal civil war and ends up in a military regime at the end of it. Our main character is Ray Garraty, who’s the representative from Maine for this year’s Long Walk, which is sponsored by the government.

The Long Walk is basically an event where fifty boys are selected across the county and forced to go on a walk that could last hundreds of miles. They must keep an even pace of 3 miles an hour, are given only a small amount of water and rations (but they can request more as they keep going), and they cannot stop walking. If they fail at any of this, after three strikes, the armed military cars following them will shoot them dead.

The final survivor of the walk will be the one to get an insane amount of cash (or at least insane in a country devastated by war and a poor economy) and one wish. Ray signed up, like so many other boys, in an attempt to get more money for his mother and family. His mother doesn’t want him to do this though, as she knows his odds of surviving are slim compared to the other boys.

She drops him off at the starting line and he meets the other boys. They all banter before the walk begins, and Ray becomes good friends with Pete. The first casualty is Curley, a boy who lied about his age in order to participate, as he gets a charley horse and ends up losing all three strikes at once. More boys slowly begin to succumb, but one particular event is when Gary taunts another boy into fighting him, leading to the other guy’s death.

Throughout the walk, Pete and Ray tell each other what their wish would be. Pete wants the world to become a better place, while Ray wants a rifle to kill the Major. Turns out his father was executed for disagreeing politically with the Major’s regime and methods, but Pete tries to tell Ray not go that route. Richard, who was writing a book about their experiences, twists his ankle on the hill and ends up dying a few days later, his foot rubbed raw to a bloody stump.

Their buddy Hank, who slowly becomes more delirious as they walk, ends up being next. He tries to attack the soldiers but is shot and left on the ground to bleed to death. Although one of the boys tries to go back, they force him to continue because he will die too if he helps Hank. They also learn Hank has a wife and they vow to send money to her.

Next is Gary, who, after being shunned by everyone else, feels guilty enough to take a spoon and stab himself in the throat. With only a few boys left, Ray almost loses it when he sees his mother on the side of the road in his town. He almost steps off the road and shot, but Pete and the rest stop him before he is gunned down.

Once they leave town, Art passes after getting an internal hemorrhage and stops, leaving the survivors behind after thanking them for their companionship. Collie steals a rifle, shoots a soldier, then kills himself before being forced to continue more. With only three left, Billy reveals he’s an illegitimate son of the Major then stops to die. He’s been sick the entire time almost and gives up, leaving Pete and Ray behind after telling them he only wanted to be accepted by his father.

On the final and fifth day, Pete and Ray arrive in a crowded city. Pete sits down to end it all, but then Ray forces him to continue. When Pete turns around, he sees Ray stopped walking. The Major then shoots Ray dead and tells Pete he won the Long Walk. Pete tells him his wish is to get a gun, then he kills the Major before turning around and walking away.

Overall Thoughts

I was unfamiliar with the material/story of this movie or the book before going into it, and I came out of the movie thinking about how these kinds of stories keep reappearing in what I’m consuming. The more popularized version for my generation is The Hunger Games, but I always remembered reading “The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas” in high school. Omelas is about a utopia run by the suffering of a child, and everyone has to be complicit to continue their joy.

All of this is to say that I enjoyed this movie—if you can say you enjoy watching a movie about suffering. It brought up these philosophical questions for me, but the nature of how the boys bonded despite the terrible thing happening to them was heartwarming to watch, even if we knew it ends in tragedy.

Watch this movie if you’re interested and want something that you can debate about later. I think if you walk away from a movie like this and don’t contemplate the state of the world, then something is deeply wrong. These movies serve as a mirror into today’s world and what it could be.

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