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With: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, Josh Hamilton, Judy Greer, Mark Hamill
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Written by: JT Mollner
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Directed by: Francis Lawrence
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MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, and sexual references
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Running Time: 108
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Date: 09/12/2025
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Stroll Survivor
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Unrelentingly brutal (physically, emotionally, and intellectually) but an intensely rewarding experience, Francis Lawrence's bloody sci-fi thriller The Long Walk will linger in your brain long after most movies have dissipated.
Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and his mother (Judy Greer) drive toward some sort of starting line. They argue. His mother doesn't want him to go. But it's too late. After a tearful goodbye, Raymond introduces himself to several other young men. He and Peter McVries (David Jonsson) become fast friends.
Before long, The Major (Mark Hamill) appears and explains the rules of the Long Walk the men are about to undertake. They must walk at least three miles per hour. If they stop for any reason, they get a warning. After three warnings, they will be shot. The winner will receive a "wish" and an unimaginable fortune. There is no finish line. There is only the last one standing.
Lying ahead of them is rain, darkness, steep hills, arguing, injury, sickness, and other challenges. But Raymond and Peter have each other.
Based on one of Stephen King's earliest books — published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman — The Long Walk is the forerunner of Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, Squid Game, and other stories of dystopian competitions, but it also leaves them behind with its concentrated purity and lack of fancy fuss.
It is even directed by Francis Lawrence (of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and all the sequels thereafter), although there's no evidence of those soft fantasy movies here; he has really stepped up his game. It probably helps that the screenplay was adapted by JT Mollner, whose movie Strange Darling was a twisty, electrifying look at violence.
This movie has a strong, continuous forward momentum, but it's an unruly story, beginning with fifty characters (all men), and comprised mostly of talking. Yet Lawrence and Mollner somehow keep things dynamic and fluid; there's a constant push-pull.
This dystopian world is filled with the kind of fascist rhetoric that is becoming increasingly common in the real world, i.e. books that encourage free thought are banned, there's an "epidemic of laziness" and "we will be #1 in the world again!" But the movie focuses on and celebrates free thought, as characters debate worldviews and trade ideas while they walk.
The Long Walk is a tale of friendship and an act of resistance, the flip-side to another recent Stephen King adaptation, the life-affirming The Life of Chuck, but equally powerful.
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