Streaming Review: THE LONG WALK

Question: What is the first novel that Stephen King completed?

If you answered CARRIE, you’d be wrong (it was his first novel published, but not the first novel he completed).

This honor would go to THE LONG WALK a book he completed as a 19 year old, but then sat in a drawer in his office until long after he became famous - - and then, famously, he published it under the pseudonym Richard Bachman because he wanted to see if this novel would stand on it’s own (and not because of his name).

And, for the most part, the novel worked - but because of the narrative structure of the book (taking place mostly through thoughts of characters) a movie adaptation proved elusive, until now.

Writer JT Mollner (OUTLAWS AND ANGELS) has finally cracked the code to this novel and along with Director Francis Lawrence (every HUNGER GAMES films except the first one) have crafted a character-driven movie that takes the novel as far as they could take it.

Set in a dystopian near-future, THE LONG WALK tells the tale of…The Long Walk…a contest for 18 year old (or just older) males where the contestants need to walk at 3 MPH and outlast the others. There’s no finish line, it’s the last man standing. And…if you fall under the 3 MPH pace, you are “exited” from the game (in a lethal way).

Sounds like a riff on THE HUNGER GAMES…and it is (but keep in mind that King wrote this well before Suzanne Collins wrote her epic about Katniss Everdeen) and with the Director of many Hunger Games films on board, it feels like you are revisiting Panem.

If only they could have built that strong of a world in this movie, for you are shown the LONG WALK and the bleakness of the landscape of the dystopian future as the boys walk past it…but you see NOTHING ELSE, so the audience just has to accept the plight of the contestants without any supporting context.

As for the contestants, Cooper Hoffman (yes, the son of Phillip-Seymour Hoffman) and David Jonsson (ALIEN: ROMULUS) anchor this film strongly as the pair of contestants we come to know and root for. It is their friendship that is at the core of this film and this friendship works very, very well.

Unfortunately, this being a character-driven film, NONE of the other contestants are fleshed out nearly as well as these two and we get to know them just enough in order for the audience to have some sort of emotional reaction when they become cannon fodder. It is the failure of the development of these other characters that ultimately pulls this film into “it’s fine (but not great)” territory.

They filmmakers do change the nebulous ending of the book - and this change is for the better (and is necessary in a movie). It gives the film a definitive ending and point of view…and this ending is needed after what we all we went through (especially for me, as I watched THE LONG WALK while walking on the treadmill).

Oh…and good ol’ Mark Hamill (a little movie series called STAR WARS) gruffly growls his way through the film as the villain of the piece “THE MAJOR” (think President Snow from The Hunger Games, but without Donald Sutherland’s subtlety).

Because subtle this film is not. It is jarring and harsh and vague.

Which, in the long run (not walk), dooms it in the end.

Letter Grade: B-

6 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank (ofMarquis)