Stephen King was still a teenager when he started writing The Long Walk, which he eventually published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. He meant it as an allegory of the military draft during the then-ongoing Vietnam War. Reading it in 2025, I was struck by how undated it felt, which is not the case with all of King’s novels from back then. It hit me as a disturbingly contemporary satire of reality TV, but the film version that opens this week makes something yet more of it, a powerful work with authentic tragic force.
In a dystopian future America where poverty is rampant and the decor is somehow reminiscent of the mid-1960s, an army major (Mark Hamill) lays out the rules of the Long Walk: Each spring, 50 adolescent boys from all over the country are chosen by lottery to compete. They walk together along a predetermined highway route for as long as they can, receiving warnings every time they stop for any reason. Three warnings, and they’re shot by the soldiers traveling with them. The last kid walking wins a fortune and one wish granted by the government.
The prospect of violent death doesn’t cow anybody at the start of the walk, since they’re all focused on the prize. Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) receives a stark introduction to the stakes about 15 miles in, when a walker who looks about 13 years old (Jojo Rabbit himself, Roman Griffin Davis) collapses from a charley horse. Ray tries to save him but only hears the boy scream, “It’s not fucking fair!” before a soldier’s bullet blows off the right side of his face.
This most Hunger Games-ian of King’s novels is adapted by Francis Lawrence, who directed most of the Hunger Games movies. He follows King’s lead and keeps the focus on the brutal effects that a forced march like this has on the human body, ignoring the reactions of the TV audience watching at home or (regrettably) King’s hints that Ray might be gay. As their 100-mile trek stretches to 200 miles and beyond, walkers experience blisters, sunstroke, ankle sprains with fatal results, and internal hemorrhaging. More than one contestant takes a run at those soldiers killing off the stragglers. The capitalistic system that makes entertainment out of these boys’ pain and suffering dovetails neatly with the major’s über-macho insistence that said pain and suffering proves those boys’ worth — which it doesn’t, for the most part. If the overall effect is sadistic and tedious, that fits the experience that the walkers are undergoing.
It might be unbearable if not for the sharply etched portraits of the other walkers in JT Mollner’s script: one bespectacled nerd (Jordan Gonzalez) who aims to write a book about his experience after he wins, a wisecracker (Ben Wang) whose sarcastic jokes keep people entertained, and a hateful bastard (Charlie Plummer) who actively gets a fellow walker killed and instantly becomes everyone’s enemy. These performances are fine, but better still is Judy Greer, who fairly tears the cover off the film’s only significant female role as Ray’s mother, who watches him walk off to near-certain death.
As brief as her screen time is, she makes an important commentary on the heart of the film, the friendship that develops between Ray and another walker named Pete McVries (David Jonsson). They find a kindred spirit despite knowing that one of them will end up dead. Jonsson is the British star of Alien: Romulus, who adopts a marble-mouthed Deep South accent here, and he becomes the moral center of the film when Ray reveals he’s taking part in the Long Walk to leave a mark on all the spectators and that fascist major. Where Ray sees a family watching by the roadside and bitterly notes that they want to watch someone die, McVries instead sees love and unity among them: “If you don’t believe in that, you might as well sit down and let them riddle you with bullets.”
It’s tempting to compare this to Stand by Me, since it also has guys on a road trip passing the time by making juvenile banter about naked women whom they’re never going to see, but that’s the wrong King movie to compare it to. The Long Walk is better than that. It’s nothing less than this generation’s Shawshank Redemption. Amid the landscape of cruelty inflicted on these young men, the friendship between Ray and Pete shines out as a beacon of humanity. Then, too, when one of them sacrifices himself for the other (the movie’s ending is slightly but significantly different from the book’s), there’s nothing we can do but have a good healthy cry over it. Seems like this generation of young men could use it.
The Long Walk
Starring Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Written by JT Mollner, based on Stephen King’s novel. Rated R.
