The Long Walk : Make every moment count

Based on a Stephen King book, when he was in his Richard Bachman era, in a post-war United States, a group of teenage boys participate in an annual contest called “The Long Walk”, where you literally walk a route nonstop, or get killed.

You wouldn’t think a book written in 1979, long before Hunger Games, but with very similar themes to explore, full of allegories concerning the Vietnam war, would be at all adaptable to the movie screen here in divided-country 2025, yet here we are. Make sure your canteen is still full, and let’s walk into this dystopian nightmare!

The entire country, in some unnamed post-war time, seems to have bought into this whole Long Walk propaganda, where the raffle for the selection of walkers is, in theory, voluntary, but we know deep down it’s far more like the draft. No female candidates are ever mentioned, and every male candidate selected, one per state, is rather teenager-young, and in theory
able-bodied, just like the draft for the war. The walkers do have fans who come out and watch them on their route here and there, and the tanks that monitor their progress also have cameras for live broadcast, capturing the spray of blood and brains when candidates start getting eliminated with the relentless camera-eye. This whole insanity is organized and led by a cheerful military man simply called the Major (Mark Hamill), who appears to have drunk gallons of the propaganda kool-aid, for country and for God, he prods these boys along their route for hundreds of miles, and makes sure they adhere to the rules, even and perhaps especially when, the rules start getting broken and the executions begin.

Our story focuses on Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and his beloved momma, Ginnie (Judy Greer), as they both turn bleak when Ray gets his letter informing him he’s been chosen to be a participant in the Long Walk. In fact, large chunks of the entire population, and huge swathes of empty land the walkers go through on their road, are bleak too. Whatever war the United States managed to survive and come out the other side of, really took its toll, and it seems as though the annual contest of the Long Walk has been a known thing for awhile now, as Ray and all his newfound companions are all nervously showing up to the starting line with backpacks, food, and other things they might need to win, likely having learned this from watching other Long Walk contestants before.

Adding to the war-like feeling, each candidate gets called up by the Major, issued a contestant number, and what looks suspiciously to me like a dog-tag, to wear around his neck. We learn as the contestants walk their route that they are issued canteens, and it is part of the monitoring soldiers’ job to make sure their canteens are always full of free, clean water, but they are afforded no help other than that.

So, they walk. And they walk, and they walk, and they walk. The pace, which is set at four miles per hour, doesn’t sound truly terrible at the beginning, until we, the audience, begin to realize the realities of such a thing. Constant maintenance of four miles per hour, not really more or less, becomes much harder when dealing with the rain, or purportedly gentle but increasing road inclines, and stuff we don’t want to think about, like how to take a dump without stopping walking. Has anyone ever tried to take a sh*t while in constant motion? Rabbits and deer do it when they’re being hunted all the time, but we humans are civilized, aren’t we? And what about things like sleep? We know it’s entirely possible to sleep standing up, but to sleep while walking? (The condition of sleepwalking that some people suffer is entirely not the same thing, don’t @ me.) The film addresses all these things with a very realistic and somehow still sympathetic view, a known King trademark, right down to the gunshots that blow half a teenager’s head off.

This is a very simple contest with very simple rules – there is no finish line it’s literally the last person left standing, stay on the road-path or else, and while each walker gets 3 whole chances to get up from their pause and go back to walking, after that, these soldiers absolutely will shoot you in the head if you’re lucky, or in the gut or lower extremities as a deterrent, to guarantee death but make it a bit slower and torturous so others won’t try to do whatever it is you did wrong too.

Why would these teenage boys participate in such a theoretically voluntary thing, having seen what happened to former Long Walk contestants and already coined a hatred for the Major? As he enthusiastically reminds them, the winner of the Long Walk is meant to receive riches and glory for his country and himself, but also, the winner gets granted one single, undeniable wish. No matter what it happens to be, that wish is meant to be fulfilled, to the best of the Major’s ability. For some, that is enough to fan the flames of their ambition, even as they gutter low while the contestants continue to walk interminably.

Ray almost immediately forms a bond with the other apparently strongest candidate, Peter McVries #23 (David Johnson), and becomes friendly with Arthur Baker #6 (Tut Nyuot) and the talkative Hank Olson #46 (Ben Wang). Barkovitch #5 (Charlie Plummer) proves to be an early antagonist and gets himself shunned for it, though he survives longer than many others. His mind doesn’t seem terribly strong, and when his psychotic break comes, you’d best be out of reach of his metal spoon. Collie Parker #48 (Joshua Odjick) is clearly of Native American heritage and is from South Dakota, and there are oh so many delicious parallels that can be assumed from his character, especially in the manner of his brave death. The enigmatic Stebbins #38 (Garrett Wareing) lasts longer than anyone expected him to as well, stoic and fueled by rage, determined to finally be seen even if it means his death. Each candidate making friends or at least having friendly-ish conversations with other walkers is made just so much worse as they begin being killed off, one by one, felled by the bullets of this country’s soldiers as they keep pace with our walkers in their tanks, resigned to this horrid duty under the enthusiastic Major. Expressions like ‘complicit’ and ‘just doing my duty’ have existed before, and

after the World Wars, but these kinds of extremes have to be beyond nightmarish for every single person involved, both walkers and soldiers alike.

The end does involve a single … I suppose you could call him a winner, though by that point I’m very sure the walker himself doesn’t think he’s won a damn thing. All his walking companions are dead, some pretty horrifically, and though he’s surrounded by cheering crowds and fireworks celebrating his victory, being offered a hearty congratulations and a “what’s your wish?” from the hated Major, our winner is on his knees, sobbing in the agony of his dubious victory. What happens after his wish is granted is actually left open for the movie viewers to personally interpret, as in, did that actually happen, or was it all in our winner’s head? And personally, I thought that was an absolutely brilliant way to end a thought-provoking, sickening,
soul-wrenching, and totally relevant even here in divided 2025, movie. It is truly wonderful, and full of all kinds of triggers – you’ve been warned.

Run, don’t walk, to see The Long Walk in theaters now!