I Would Walk 500 Miles

Film: The Long Walk
Format: Market Square Cinema Theater 2

When I was a Junior in high school, I was just starting out as a horror fan. Around that time, it was revealed that Stephen King had published five books under the name of Richard Bachman. Four of those books were published in a single volume called “The Bachman Books.” I liked all four of them but of them, The Long Walk was the best of them. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have been waiting 41 years for this movie. It is a brutal, vicious book, and I was hoping that the translation to film would be the same. The Long Walk has some significant differences, but it tells the story extremely well.

You’re going to hear people talk about this in the weeks ahead, and they are going to make comparisons to things like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, and I’ve heard someone dismiss it as just a new version of Squid Game. Please know that this came first—King’s book was published in 1979. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is derivative of those stories, since those stores came later.

The basics of The Long Walk is that we are in a future United States that is economically depressed after a war, of which we get very little detail. The country is essentially a fascist dictatorship run by someone called The Major (Mark Hamill). Most of the population lives in crushing poverty. As a way to try to jumpstart the economy and, really, to give the citizenry the circuses part of “bread and circuses,” there is a yearly event called The Long Walk that takes place at the start of May. Fifty boys, one from each state (it’s 100 in the book and completely random in terms of states) are placed at the northern border of Maine. Once the event starts, they start walking south. They must stay at three miles per hour. Fall below that speed and get a warning. Ten seconds later at a slower speed, another warning. After three warnings, the walker who has slowed down earns a bullet. Walk an hour at pace and you slough a warning. The Walk goes until there is one walker left.

We’re going to spend our time with a few of the walkers. Our primary concern will be Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), but we’ll also spend a great deal of time with his primary walking companion, Peter McVries (David Jonsson). Other characters will come in and out of their group—Baker (Tut Nyuot), Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), Olson (Ben Wang), and Parker (Joshua Odjick) among others, with the main foil being Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer).

Over the course of the walk, we learn the motivations of the walkers, or at least of some of them. The ultimate winner of the Walk gets a massive amount of cash—the main draw for many of them due to the abject poverty that most of them live in. The winner also gets a wish, anything they want that is within the power of the government and the Major to give. Baker, for instance, claims that he’d like to go to the moon for his wish, while Olson wants ten naked ladies. Garraty’s wish is one that needs to be brought out in the course of the movie because it explains a great deal of who he is and what keeps him putting one foot in front of the other.

Most, but not all, of the major set pieces from the book have survived to the film, something that a book purist like myself is pleased with. A great deal, of course, has been compressed. As mentioned above, the book holds the contest between 100 boys who are given numbers alphabetically, which honestly helps in the reading to keep them straight. The rules of the walk are changed from the book, which requires an insane 4mph pace, but also allows for 30 second intervals between warnings instead of just 10.

Additionally, a number of the characters have been compressed, which makes sense going from 100 walkers to 50. Stebbins has elements of Scramm from the book, as does Olson. Collie Parker has been changed to include the two Native walkers, Mike and Joe. Some characters from the book, like Harkness and Pearson, are vastly reduced while others, like Abraham, are non-existent.

The end is also significantly changed from the book. The order of the last few eliminated is wildly different, as is the character of the guy who comes in third in significant ways. There are other details, of course, that have been sensibly cut for time. McVries’s discussion of his facial scars is very divergent from the book, and Garraty simply has broken up with his girlfriend, while she has much more significance in the novel.

The truth is that the only way this could really live up to what I wanted was a virtual word-for-word adaptation of a book that has been very meaningful to me for most of my life. Like many similar stories, this would be best created as a five-part miniseries. I’m not disappointed, though. The Long Walk is brutal and unflinching and disturbing in places, and while there are a few set pieces I would have loved to have seen, this is probably the best that I could hope for. The ending is a bit less bleak in the film than it was in the novel, but it’s on the same plane, and really, that’s what I was hoping to see.

The Long Walk is not the kind of film that shows up during award season because of its genre, and that's a shame. I have no real hopes of this getting any recognition, but if there is justice in the world, David Jonsson will be talked about come Oscar season. Cooper Hoffman is good--I have strong opinion on him one way or the other, but I hope this leads to a long and productive career for Jonsson. Oh, and it's lovely to see Mark Hamill playing in live action the sort of villain roles he does in voice over work.

Why to watch The Long Walk: This is arguably one of Stephen King’s best novels and one of the best adaptations of his work.
Why not to watch: The ending is less bleak here than in the original book.