THE LONG WALK
****
Directed by Francis Lawrence.
Starring Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Mark Hamil.
Science-Fiction, US, 108 Minutes, Certificate 15.
Released in cinemas in the UK on 12th September by Lionsgate
You know how it is, you wait ages for a Bachman Books adaptation and two come along almost at once. Weeks before Edgar Wright’s adaptation of THE RUNNING MAN arrives on screens, Francis Lawrence beats him to the punch with THE LONG WALK. Written by Stephen King while still in college, it was eventually released in 1979 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. One of the few King novels to evade a screen adaptation, outside of The Dark Tower cycle, it attracted directors such as George A. Romero and Frank Darabont over the years. That two such esteemed directors could not get one of King’s simplest, and most brutal, premises to the screen perhaps makes you wonder how a director such as Francis Lawrence, best known for his work on THE HUNGER GAMES franchise, also inspired by King’s novel, got the job here. Would this be a case of a classic Hollywood sanitisation diluting the essence of another classic novel?
Thankfully, that is simply not the case here at all. Lawrence, with the aid of STRANGE DARLING director J.T. Mollner’s excellent script, has delivered a film that manages to keep the grim atmosphere of its source material intact, delivering a film that feels as immediate and gripping as the first time you read the book and more than timely with a worryingly plausible spin on where the United States could soon end up.
Set in a dystopian future, years into a great financial crisis brought on after an undisclosed war, we learn that the titular event is a voluntary duty taken on by young men to achieve a personal fortune beyond imagining. The rules are simple: walk without stopping while maintaining a speed of 3 miles per hour. If you stop after three warnings you are brutally eliminated from the game. Only when there is one walker left will the challenge come to an end. Ray Garraty, played by Cooper Hoffman, has his own reasons beyond financial gain for taking part. While undertaking the arduous journey he strikes up a friendship with McVries, David Jonsson, a charming and garrulous figure who unites a small number of the other forty eight walkers. As the miles slowly rack up and players start dropping like flies, under the cruel watchful eye of The Major, the military overseer of the game played by Mark Hamill, the pressure mounts up as well as the physical and mental challenges brought on by this cruel spectacle that is meant to inspire a ruined country.
With just a few tweaks to the plot, this is a more than faithful retelling of King’s story. Despite the slight aging up of the characters, the book's compelling and entertainingly sadistic and near existential edge, has been tempered into something that is every bit as brutal and doom laden here. The burgeoning friendship of Garraty and McVries is often overshadowed by the fact that these are two men in direct life or death competition with each other, a fact that is expertly put across by the affecting double act of Hoffman and Jonsson. After stealing the show in ALIEN: ROMULUS, Jonsson just about achieves the same trick here, bringing a warmth to the film as it gets darker and darker and the executioners begin to outnumber the contestants on this long unforgiving road to oblivion. However, Cooper Hoffman more than proves his worth here after the promise he showed in LICORICE PIZZA with his portrayal of an angry young man succumbing to the various pitfalls of the impossible task he finds himself on. Mark Hamill meanwhile continues his late career shift into gravel voiced villainy in fine form here as The Major, a hateful figure with a fine line in motivational speaking.
Like its protagonist this is an angry, sad and despairing piece of work. Where most major studios feel the need to tone down the source material to get as wide an audience as possible, this is a surprisingly bleak and violent film, refusing to shy away from the original author's darkest rage-filled impulses. The first death, arriving when it does after a measured build-up, is shocking in its brutality, only for each subsequent fatality after that to cause a mounting sense of anxiety within the viewer with every single gunshot echoing long after the triggers have been pulled, with bodies littering the asphalt in shocking and gruelling fashion. Untied laces, charley horses and going to the toilet become dread inducing events that wind up the viewer as the walk goes on and on.
The film's sense of resilience and hope manages to shine through however, stopping it from becoming an exercise in misery. Running at just under two hours, Lawrence packs a lot in here with his spare, elegant visual style of a depression-struck America regressing into the past, with long uninterrupted takes of conversational scenes laced with a sense of mounting tension and the excellent handling of his sizable cast. Every bit as tough and compelling as the book, it stands out, not only as Lawrence’s best film yet but as one of the best King adaptations in years.
Iain MacLeod