Call it a self-help book on film for becoming a man. It may be based on one of Stephen King’s earliest writings from 1979, but the grim dystopian domestic future of Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk (B+) now feels like it could be happening in today’s America a few weeks or months from now, with lessons of utmost consequence. The fleeting facade of wistful young male life gets full anthropological examination here, prescient in a week characterized by cauldrons of vengeance, violence, chasms of disagreement and debate about forgiveness, martyrdom and legacy playing out in real time on everyone’s feeds, cable news and conversations. The story goes like this: Each year a group of 50 fresh-faced young men take part in a televised walking contest across a stark, abandoned U.S. highway, marching continuously or else they’ll be individually executed, until only one remains. The film zeroes in on one of these consorts making their mostly futile trek. Although undoubtedly an allegory for a Vietnam War platoon when written, the reverse-purge survival of the fittest events depicted in the film, set in totalitarian times, reveal a stunningly diverse set of behaviors about male bonding, toxicity and both hopeless and hopeful life philosophies not so far removed from young male life in the evolving experiment of today. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson are flat-out phenomenal as the dual protagonists who become best friends on the journey; they provide indelible characterizations and much of the heart and humor in an otherwise brutal environment along the intersection of Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Marquis de Sade. There are such shades here of King’s own The Shawshank Redemption (unexpected venue for spiritual dialogue) and the Lawrence-directed The Hunger Games (lottery ticket with human stakes), it’s no wonder the source material and director were so lock-stepped. Mark Hamill is nearly unrecognizable as a ubiquitous hybrid TV host/drill sergeant who is chilling but underdeveloped in his blissful menace. The film opts to be very graphic in its parade of cranium kills, and candid in its language and depiction of anatomical challenges along the journey, almost daring audiences to turn a wincing eye from the horrors of the propulsive proceedings. The very nature of the film being told in what amounts to near perpetual motion makes for a singular experience of naturalistic moviemaking. Many details about the story’s exact time and location are left to the imagination, a la Civil War, a curious choice sometimes freeing and equally often perplexing. Evoking the literate and pop culturally attuned characters of The Outsiders or Stand by Me, there’s a feeling this talented ensemble is recognizing its place in a Mark Twain meets Aldous Huxley universe, or even Biblical end times, grasping for the meaning of it all. It’s a very tough watch but thoughtful and rewarding to those on its wavelength. There are universal takeaways and truths in what feels both contemporary and bygone. For all of its chilling carnage, this sturdy dying-of-age film reveals glimmers of hope about how people can attune personal outlook to approach every next step with purpose.
