The Long Walk (2025) * * *

Directed by: Francis Lawrence

Starring:  Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer, Mark Hamill, Judy Greer

The Long Walk is exhausting to watch, and not in a bad sense, but in a visceral one.  The dystopian film, based on a Stephen King/Richard Bachman novella, is about a group of young men who participate in a walk in which you must continue to walk or be executed by military escorts.  The prize for the winner?  Untold riches and your biggest wish granted.  The prize description is vague, but the dire nature of the contest is not.  

The movie takes place during a war-plagued dystopia, but when?  King's novella was written in the 1970's and the characters' clothing and vehicles suggest that time period, but since the 1970's have come and gone, trying to shoehorn this vision of the "future" into it is awkward.  Or maybe the period exists in a timelessness like A Clockwork Orange.  The Long Walk's two main protagonists are Ray (Hoffman) and Peter (Jonsson), who form a friendship and alliance in which they manage to physically and psychologically prop each other up as the walk continues endlessly into the night.  The walk, which is televised to a nationwide audience, is lorded over by The Major (Hamill), who spits out the rules and espouses the participants' hope and patriotism like he's channeling Sgt. Slaughter.   

If any of the participants even stops long enough to urinate or defecate, then they're given three warnings before being shot.  The road soon becomes littered with bodies, fecal matter, blood, and other gross objects.  Hoffman, the son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a fine actor, but he is a bit pudgy to be lasting this long in the marathon walk.  If he weren't the star, we would picture him being among the first to exit.  Jonsson is in much better physical shape and it is more believable that he would wind up in the final four.  The Long Walk becomes a tale of suspense and endurance.  Ray has an ulterior motive in wanting to win the race, involving The Major, and the payoff isn't worthy of the buildup.  But, then again, how could it be?  The Long Walk is not a happy movie, and it doesn't end that way either.