Wow, Lionsgate finally got a win. Not that a bloody and intellectual anti-corporate allegory with a mid-tier budget and zero chance of franchising will be enough to save the studio, but it’s nice to see them crank out a legitimately good film after such a long string of failures. (Then again, somebody apparently figured out how to make a sequel to The Black Phone, so I guess anything’s possible.) Of course, the box office returns still haven’t come in as of this typing — if the studio can’t spin a box office win out of their best film in years, that’s yet another nail in the coffin.
The Long Walk was adapted from a Richard Bachman (read: Stephen King) novel by screenwriter JT Mollner (late of Strange Darling) and recurring Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence. The film is set in a wasteland USA, ravaged by economic collapse in the wake of some unnamed war. As such, a contest is set up in which a young adult is chosen by lottery to represent each state in a competition, broadcast for the enjoyment and inspiration of the greater nation. The winner gets fabulous riches and any wish the government can grant. The other competitors all die.
The Hunger Games comparisons write themselves. Especially given the involvement of Lionsgate and Lawrence. But there are so many reasons why it works better here.
First of all, let’s get into more specifics with regard to exactly what this competition is. The rules are simple: Keep walking. Dip below 3 MPH and the contestant dies. Go off the path and the contestant dies. There are no allowances or excuses for anyone who gets sick or injured or if anyone has to tie their shoes — slow down and die, period. Last one alive wins.
There are a number of benefits to this format, as opposed to the Hunger Games. For one thing, while the Hunger Games took place entirely within a tightly controlled arena, this setup serves as a walking tour through the greater dystopian setting. We get to directly see the world, the people who live within it, how shitty things are for them, and what the Long Walk means to them, all without losing the tight and consistent focus on our main characters and their ongoing struggle. Brilliant.
Speaking of which, there’s none of the Hunger Games’ gaudy sci-fi trappings here. The world-building is kept to the barest minimum, with the understanding that none of it matters as much as the central allegory. Hell, we don’t even get any kind of futuristic tech — everything looks like science and technology got bombed back to the 1950s, which paradoxically gives the film a kind of timeless feel. Moreover, pretty much the whole movie is shot in varying shades of grey and brown, clearly and aggressively depicting this as a hopeless military police state.
Which brings us to the Major (Mark Hamill), apparently the new supreme dictator of the USA. Yet here he is, taking time away from running the nation to personally oversee the Long Walk. There’s no getting around it, this is a one-dimensional character with no degree of nuance, and he does far more in this picture than any one person could reasonably accomplish. Does it make any kind of literal sense? Absolutely not. But as an allegorical symbol, as the living embodiment of the system that’s keeping the contestants and the entire world oppressed, it makes a lot of sense.
(Side note: Seriously, “the Major”? Not the Commander-in-Chief, the General, or even the Colonel? This is the title and rank we’re going with for the guy who’s in charge of this whole mess? Sure, whatever.)
Even better, the Major opens the film with a monologue to explain that the Long Walk is intended as a demonstration of work ethic. It’s a show of tenacity and ambition to inspire the same in the general populace. Most importantly, the Major states clearly and emphatically that “anyone can win.”
Yes, anyone can win. But it’s left unspoken that not everyone can. And why is that? Surely, if the prize money is so exorbitantly huge, it could be split 50 ways and all the contestants would still come away comfortably rich. There’s really no reason why it has to be set up this way, except that the people making the rules have all the guns. I might further add that all the contestants were chosen by lottery, so they’re all supposedly lucky enough just to get a chance in this competition.
As the original novel was written in 1975, I can see how the premise could work as an allegory for the Vietnam War. But as presented in the film, it works far better as an anti-corporate allegory. The film goes into great detail in discussing how the Long Walk is the product of a broken system in which everyone is pressed into impossibly difficult choices and thus choice itself is only an illusion.
The symbolism takes on increasingly more layers as the characters are pushed beyond all physical limits, caught between the twin pressures of certain death and fabulous riches. It’s particularly noteworthy how competing with each other (bullying, picking fights, violence, cheating, etc.) only serve to make things deadlier, while the characters get further and stay stronger by helping each other.
This is most clearly symbolized in our two protagonists, Raymond Garraty and Peter McVries (respectively played by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson). Without going too deeply into details or spoilers, both of them are the victims of this cruel and unjust system the Major is responsible for. The difference is that one of them is out for bloody vengeance while the other wants to try and make the system more fair. And the film is quite deliberately ambiguous as to how and whether either one will be enough to make any kind of significant change.
Best of all, there comes a point when the prize money is no longer enough to justify all the suffering our characters are going through. At some point, the last few characters are only enduring through pure inertia, the constant threat of death, concern for each other, and spite for those keeping them in place. At this point, the anti-corporate allegory morphs into something far greater and the Long Walk becomes symbolic of life itself. It’s nothing but one foot in front of the other, with painful fatigue increasing with every step, until we finally can’t go any further and then we die. And if we’re lucky, we get to make some friends and memories along the way to provide some comfort when the end comes.
Another crucial difference from Hunger Games is that there’s no sanitizing this for a PG-13 audience. The filmmakers are damn sure to press how bloody and barbaric this whole thing is. The first several kills are shown in uncompromising close up, gore and all. Even when the kills happen somewhere in the background, the score and the other characters’ reactions leave no room for interpretation.
And those are just the kills — all throughout the movie, we see various contestants literally wear themselves down. We get feet worn down to bloody nubs. One character loses a tooth to chewing gum. There are muscle spasms, there’s gradual insanity, and don’t get me started on what happens with excrement.
No getting around it, this is a bleak and deeply unpleasant film. So is there any kind of levity here? Well, we’ve got Ben Wang to provide a few wisecracks, and Charlie Plummer works well as a bullying hate sink. (It’s a Stephen King story, of course there’s a bully to suffer for our amusement.) All the characters make a point of finding humor and levity where they can, but it’s all gallows humor. Thus the comic relief characters are undercut by the knowledge that they’re eventually going to die like everyone else.
What we need is a source of levity who’s totally separate from the competition. Enter Judy Greer, in the role of Garraty’s mother. Longtime readers will know I’m a big fan of Judy Greer, and she works superbly well as a warm memory for Garraty to fight for and try to go back home to. Here’s the problem: Ginnie’s another one-dimensional character who doesn’t get much of anything to do except cry over Garraty. Even when she shows up in a flashback scene, Ginnie only gets to smile and sing for so long before everything goes to shit and she’s right back to tearfully screaming.
No doubt about it, The Long Walk is a tough watch. Even so, the camaraderie between characters is fantastic to watch and the premise is developed in surprising ways. I expect a few filmgoers may be put off by how the greater world out side the Long Walk is pathetically thin, and the characters who aren’t part of the Walk are all laughably one-dimensional, but the allegory is the important thing. And it’s an intelligent, heart-wrenching, gut-churning allegory that only picks up more nuance and layers as the plot unfolds.
It’s a bleak movie that certainly wasn’t designed to be a crowd-pleaser, but it’s greatly rewarding for those with the fortitude to stick through it. Check it out.