The Long Walk

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• MovieGuys9 از 10

  Take a road, a few military props and a small group of young actors and you have the essentials of "The Long Walk". This is story is, in essence, a condensed metaphor, for walking the passage of life, its hopes, its dreams, nightmares and what life truly means to each of us, when its about to end. This is, in its own way, also a harsh repudiation of state sanctioned violence. Where the young are brutally sacrificed, by the old, in the pursuit of power and control. In spite of the fact this film is derived from Stephen Kings work, an author I have mixed feelings about, Id characterize it as an "instant classic". Thirty years from now this will be as refresh, remarkable, moving and memorable as it was in 2025. Why? Putting aside the more than excellent, intelligently written script, what makes this essentially very simple film shine is polished, quality acting. A rare thing these days, where candy coated CGI and "doing stuff" has taken the place of thoughtful, insightful cinema. The acting from the whole cast is credit worthy but the leads Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, offer up performances that are stark, honestly human, in short, exceptional. In summary, I can't comprehend the negative reviews of this film. Its one of the best I've seen not only this year but in a very long time. A truly compelling watch.

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• CinemaSerf7 از 10

  Initially, I though this had something of the “Hunger Games” to it, as a group of fifty young men assemble at a military roadblock. It appears they have each won a lottery and a prize of untold riches awaits the winner of a walking competition. The rules are simple. Keep above 3 m.p.h. and don’t stop. “Ray” (Cooper Hoffman) pays an emotion farewell to his mum and joins a group of lads that includes “Pete” (David Jonsson); the somewhat odious “Barkovitch” (Charlie Plummer), talkative “Olson” (Ben Wang) and the lithe and fit looking “Stebbins” (Garrett Wareing) and “Art” (Tut Nyuot). A rousing speech from the “Major” (Mark Hamill) explains the rules to them, and makes clear that it will quite literally be the last man standing who wins. Quickly, “Ray” and “Pete” bond and as they set off, we discover more about what makes these two men tick, interspersed with some lively contributions from their fellow walkers who manage to engage, irritate, offend and motivate as the miles accrue and the numbers dwindle. This takes a fairly intense look at the processes of male bonding and both Hoffman and Jonsson deliver powerfully compelling performances as both characters come to terms with an unpleasant inevitability as hunger and sleep deprivation take their toll. Both Wang and Plummer also deliver unexpectedly charismatic efforts here: a far cry from anything I’ve seen either do before, and though he’s not on screen often, Hamill also manages to exude a degree of malevolent megalomania as this effort to reenergise the not so industrious youth of America travels the country. I felt that it built well to a poignant denouement, but at the moment of truth it rather lost it’s potency and I think it caved in a bit. Still, there is an intensity, a warmth and some vulnerability on show here as both physical and mental endurance are tested to the limits whilst wrapped in a coat of guilt, ambition and increasing inter-reliance. It’s not an easy watch, but as a (less brutal) allegory for so much of modern day, dog-eat-dog life, it works really quite powerfully.

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• ergenekon6 از 10

  Has "the hunger games" vibe with less detail on world fiction, and does not intend to explain it neither. A 6/10 movie with good sub-message.

• oscarlidenbrock4 از 10

  I started watching the movie thinking it would be a knockoff of The Hunger Games or maybe Battle Royale, but with a smaller budget. Instead, I found a film that makes little sense and has an even worse ending. The story follows a small group of boys who sign up for a government-organized event where they must take part in an endless walk with 50 participants. The rule is that the first 49 who stop, for whatever reason, will be killed. According to the film, the government does this to motivate the population, since the winner will receive wealth and a wish—which ultimately shapes the ending, though not in a very coherent way. It presents a dystopian future, but at no point does it really show why it is dystopian. They only mention that society has come out of a war and that people are struggling, but without offering much detail. At one point, it’s also shown that the government is authoritarian and executes dissidents—though not before giving them a chance to change their views by believing in its message. This somewhat undermines the portrayal of it being truly authoritarian, but only slightly. During the walk, participants die from various causes, most of which are quite pathetic, such as having diarrhea or attacking one of the soldiers for no real reason. I think the movie was trying to suggest that one of the protagonists wanted to resist that oppression due to a past experience, but in the end it comes across as a very slow film with little real interest.

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• user16383 از 10

  This review contains spoilers. As you can probably tell, this isn't a "good movie 10/10" type review and I honestly don't know how to write a good one without spoiling things. I believe these spoilers are necessary to understand just how disappointing the film is and that they don't deter from the movie's "experience". You can already guess that half of the characters will die after the first night and that the main character and his best friend will be the last two remaining. Also, art is subjective. The review below is my opinion. I'm not claiming that it's the objective truth. With that said, let's get started. Watching The Long Walk felt precisely as the name suggests: it was a long, tedious, bland and repetitive experience. It's the worst kind of bad: It wasn't a movie about an alien spaceship suddenly interrupting the participants and abducting The Major. This would've been a "worse" movie, but at least an entertaining *experience*. Instead, The Long Walk feels mundane, relentlessly trying to achieve a tone of philosophical seriousness and spectacularly, being something more than "just" a movie (specifically a "great" movie, see below), failing to achieve it. I've structured this review into the four categories I believe make up a "good movie": graphics, story, characters (including dialogue) and worldbuilding. I am specifically not addressing what makes a movie "great". A great movie, on top of these four categories, has to educate and elevate. Both of these criteria are not just my opinion, a lot of critics and people working in the scene believe that, too, although they may use different terminology. Feel free to disagree, and let me know if you have a better definition of a "good" versus a "great" movie. The graphics were ... okay. As you likely know, the film is live-action (if you’re reading this review, you probably do) and I noticed that the movie uses an anamorphic lens (simple explanation: makes blurry details look oval), which is usually a sign of high-budget filming and professionalism. The colors were pleasant, I didn't find them to be too vivid or too dark. The resolution was also okay, I don't know what the actual resolution was but it didn't *feel* high-res, especially in facial details. However, I only noticed it when I was specifically looking for it, so I'll give the (percieved) resolution a pass. What I did find problematic was the frame rate. The movie had some fast-moving shots close to corn fields in a low frame rate, which made me nauseous, and I normally *never* get anything close to nauseous when watching all kinds of movies. A simple story isn't inherently bad. A movie can excel with a simple story, provided the characters are interesting and well-developed and the worldbuilding is there. But I'm not sure how to describe the story of The Long Walk, as there hardly is one. The overarching plot is exactly what the overview suggests: 50 people walking for their lives. What you read is what you get, there's nothing extra, nothing special. There are some interesting characters that briefly spice up the story, including our main character Raymond Garraty and his new best friend, Peter McVries, who he meets during the walk. I'll talk more about them in the next part. What was interesting to see, or rather what would've been interesting to see if it didn't fail with the characters and worldbuilding, was Ray's arrival to The Long Walk with his mother and his later reunion with her during the walk. The former was also one of the few instances of worldbuilding in the movie, which I’ll address later. What also really confused me was the timing of the warnings. While some characters got theirs after just seconds of standing still, others could stop for minutes before anything would happen. It took away all immersion (if there was any left, we'll get to that) because it truly felt like the timings were set up to make the movie more dramatic. Talking about the charac…

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• Brent Marchant2 از 10

  Director Francis Lawrence’s screen adaptation of Stephen King’s novel by the same name is one of those pictures that makes me want to stand up in the theater and exclaim that the Emperor is indeed naked (though I’d probably be quickly escorted from the moviehouse if I did so). The source material for this production, originally written at the time of the Vietnam War, was an allegory about the draft and its impact on young American men at the time, a mandate that often led to their deaths in an unpopular and largely unexplained conflict. And it’s a statement that’s admittedly still valid (albeit perhaps not as relevant) all these many years later. However, the story’s translation from book to screen in the present day leaves much to be desired, in part because its message isn’t as timely as when the book was written and in part because of the film’s stunningly poor execution. “The Long Walk” tells the tale of a feebly justified (and even more poorly explained) grim ritual in which 50 young men selected from a nationwide lottery embark on a nonstop march in which they must maintain a minimum 3 mph walking speed. Their determined efforts in this symbolic venture are supposedly intended to inspire the population to become more productive citizens in a dystopian version of America as it recovers from a great war. But those who fail to sustain their pace are mercilessly gunned down after three warnings (and who said cold-blooded killing isn’t motivational?). The last man standing in this open-ended competition is named the “winner,” an accomplishment that entitles him to whatever he wishes as a reward. Symbolism and literary surrealism aside, however, the premise behind this work is utterly absurd, especially since participation in the march is voluntary, a betrayal of one of the principal thematic elements of the source material in allegorically criticizing an underlying inhumane mandate. Given that, then, who in their right mind would sign up for something like this? But, beyond the inherent lunacy of its premise (not to mention its contradictory and countless logically implausible plot elements), the picture fails as a well-crafted, engaging work of cinema. To begin with, it commits the cardinal moviemaking sin of predictability, its narrative events and ultimate outcome largely visible from miles away. Next, its storyline quickly becomes tediously repetitive with only minor deviations in plot devices along the way. Its billing as a horror flick is seriously misplaced, as it’s not particularly scary – just gratuitously gross whose shock value impact and multiple disgusting references to bodily functions fade rapidly by going to the same tiresome well far too many times. And, on top of all that, it’s often terribly boring, loaded with protracted conversations among bland, monodimensional characters that just aren’t especially compelling or profound. The screenplay driving all this appears to draw its inspiration from the narratives in pictures like “Platoon” (1986) and any number of classic World War II buddy films but with less articulate and attention-holding writing. To its credit, the film valiantly attempts to infuse the story with insights related to contemporary social and political issues, though these efforts sadly remain largely underdeveloped. What’s more, there are missed opportunities here, too, such as the picture’s failure to make a definitive statement about the bloodsport nature of the event given its popularity with a rapt, admiring and inexplicably reverential public that’s able to watch the entire spectacle via a live video feed. When all of these elements (or should I say shortcomings?) are combined, you’ve got one ridiculously hot cinematic mess (handily one of the worst releases of 2025), one that probably would have been more aptly titled “Roadkill.” I find it puzzling that this offering from the director of four of the five “Hunger Games” franchise releases was unable to work his magic once again in this r…

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