Directed By Francis Lawrence

Starring – Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing

The Plot – In the near future, where America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The game is simple: maintain a steady walking pace of three miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings, and you’re out…..permanently.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, and sexual references.

The Long Walk (2025) Official Trailer – Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson

POSITIVES

It may have taken forty-six years to bring Stephen King’s literary debut to screen, however Francis Lawrence knows a thing or two about post apocalyptic landscapes and the fight for survival, and because of such “The Long Walk” hooks audiences in a lot of the same ways that King’s novels have made him one of the most prolific writers of our time. For starters, Lawrence and screenwriter, J.T Mollner, invest dedicatedly towards their characters, building a believably sincere kinship between them that not only appraises stakes in knowing that we will regretfully have to say goodbye to most of them, along the way, but also helps towards articulating a charmingly upbeat banter among its characters, despite an established world-building seemingly hopeless from those who have inherited it. It certainly helps that the performances go out of their way to bring legitimacy to the engagement, especially Cooper Hoffman and a star-making turn from David Jonsson, the latter of which has zero reservations about stealing this movie from his opposition, but it also helps that Lawrence tonally goes a different route from his time helming “The Hunger Games” franchise, fleshing out the hopes and desires of his established characters, in order to make it easier to invest and identify with them, but also an unavoidably tragic element to their disposals that ultimately makes it more difficult to say goodbye to them. Make no mistakes, however, as this is still a Stephen King story, at the end of the day, so there is a macabre element in gore and brutality that surprisingly sneaks up on audiences during the first kill, emphasizing every inch of the R-rating that ruthlessly and barbarically illustrates the high stakes that these boys are walking towards. While I have certain issues with the depiction of this gore, I think the piercing sound design of these alarming gunshots inscribes an exclamation point of a reminder to audiences who effortlessly lose themselves in the depths of these enlighteningly profound conversations, affording the audience the inescapability to never lose sight of the deadly game before these characters, even with so much versatility to the 103-minute runtime that continuously keeps moving in pacing. In addition to this, the script also takes ample time to flesh out the likely scenarios that you wouldn’t typically see in a plot like this, with spontaneous bathroom breaks, the breakdown of the human anatomy, and even some subtle make-up designs in the desaturated coloring of characters, to evoke an unsettling adversity that satisfied the curiosity from within me. While not everything is answered remarkably in the script, these elements alone prove that Mollner is able to lose himself in the ‘What if’ predicaments of what any of us might stumble into, and while it’s already difficult to walk 360 miles across five days on its own daunting merits, the daily relief that we take for granted might be the dark angel waiting in the wings and ready to pounce on these boys, enacting vulnerably brittle situations that constantly shrinks the group’s numbers with enough urgency to keep it interesting. In terms of adaptations, the film is about 90% similar to its literary predecessor, though made alarmingly different during a closing climax throughout the film’s final ten minutes, that, at least for my money, inspired an even more satisfying and meaningful resolution than the abrupt predictability of the book. Without spoiling anything, I can say that this gives King fans more than enough reason to seek it out, as the full circle themes and dynamics of the characters did attain a seemingly fresh take to the experience, even if the journey in getting there is ripe with familiarity, leading to an impactful final sequence that combines the emotionality and relief of one character, without anything opting for a cheap way out to deviate from the rules, similar to “The Hunger Games”. Last but not least, I previously made mention of Hoffman and Jonsson’s unbreakable work in the execution of these characters, with remarkable chemistry at their disposal, but there’s a dramatic depth and complex tangibility to the outline of the respective characters that makes their work expansively gratifying to the limitations of the single stage setting, beginning with Hoffman, who once again carves out another captivatingly nuanced performance. As Ray, Hoffman simmers with the anger, regret, and misplaced hope of what makes his decision to enter this endurance test every bit believable as it is tragic, but his best moments come much later in the walk, where physically he conveys the traumatic bodily toll that this extensive march has on him, with sagging and slouching that tenderly tantalizes our awareness for the rules, and how close he comes to breaking them. As for Jonsson, he truly elevates the appeal of the film in ways that cannot be complimented enough, whether in A magnetically mystique demeanor evoking a mysteriousness to his outline, or his generosity and resilience providing the motivational mentor that Ray requires to keep going, and while he’s definitely the supporting character to Hoffman’s lead, the film even feels like it focuses on him more firmly during its second half, where Jonsson takes charge of more of the long-winded dialogue, in order to utilize determination as a light to the setting, almost in the same way that Andy Dufresne represents hope in “The Shawshank Redemption”.

NEGATIVES

While “The Long Walk” is among the better Stephen King adaptations of the past decade, some unflattering aspects keep it from competing with the best of those installments of all-time, beginning with the lack of chances taken with the aforementioned screenplay, which has its structure reveling in repetition more frequently than I would’ve liked. While I did appreciate that this movie wastes no time in the materializing of its plot, I can say that more time building the dynamic between Ray and his Mother (Played solidly by Judy Greer) could’ve painted more of an outline towards their struggles, as well as helped to build anticipation heading into the walk that allows us more time to grow with Ray as the film’s dominant protagonist. In addition to this, I wish the script opted for more of its flashback framing device, like it does during the opening act, as some temporary deviation away from the road could’ve helped maintain a fresh consistency to its conflict that could’ve aided against repetition eventually setting in, around the film’s one hour mark. The script also leaves the world-building outside of the walk a bit compromisingly vague, for my personal tastes, with an abundance of unanswered questions, not only in the logic of the game itself (With a seemingly endless gas tank in these Sherman tanks), but also in its unaddressed rules (Why no women?) that could’ve assembled a far greater realization of what’s captured. Aside from the script, the film also matches King predecessors of the past, in that its antagonist characters are the most distracting and ridiculously orchestrated characters of the entire film, breaking attention to conversations that crumble each time Mark Hamill’s General, or Charlie Plummer’s Barkovitch opens their mouths to chime in. To be fair, neither of them are terrible actors, as they have both proved spellbinding work with dramatic turns that proves they can each carry a film on their own merits, it’s just that villains never come across as anything other than bizarrely silly in these kinds of movies, and the dialogue deduces itself to a child’s level because of such, with vulgarly vitriolic rants involving everyone’s favorite four letter word that occasionally makes Mollner’s script feel like a teenager took over during certain instances. Finally, I did appreciate the film’s unflinching nature with depicting gore as the abrupt resolutions to so many of these unfortunate characters, however when articulated with C.G blood designs of the most intrusively distracting captivity, exudes an unintentionally campy consistency to the capture, making the deposits stand out with an alarming element of artificiality. Because it never evolves with any kind of consistency in texture or coloring, it does become easier to accept it, by the film’s midway point, but it doesn’t change the fact that it brings out the cheapness in the production that I wish opted for practicality, especially in a film so unabashedly transparent with its opting for adult emphasized brutality.

OVERALL
“The Long Walk” goes the distance as one of the better Stephen King adaptations in recent memory, both with a kinetic kinship among its characters that in turn enacts two unbreakable performances between Hoffman and Jonsson, but also in an abundance of unforeseen brutality that punctuates the permanency in such a dangerous game. While the script doesn’t dig as deep with the characters as I would’ve preferred, and the special effects are a bit too glaringly artificial in their rendering, Lawrence imbeds a lot of heart and humanity to his long-distance engagement, in turn conveying that it’s not so much about the destination, but rather the grueling journey in getting there.

My Grade: 7.7 or B