Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
The Long Walk - Movie Review by Lisa Blanck
The U.S. had been involved in the Vietnam War since the 1950’s. Though America’s involvement had initially been limited to advisors, U.S. troops began being deployed significantly in 1965. It was 1966-67, when, as a 19- year- old freshman at the University of Maine, Stephen King wrote The Long Walk. Though it was first published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman, it was the first novel King penned.
There is no doubt that King was ethically and morally offended by the war, which prompted him to write the story. It was in March of 1965 when the first newsclips of American’s troops fighting a horrific ground war began airing on broadcast television. Though he was rejected from military service, draft-age King was certainly exposed to those images. News organizations embedded correspondents into platoons, sending back footage of the chaos and death, images broadcast into people’s living rooms during the dinner hour.
The Vietnam draft lottery targeted 18- to- 26-year-old young American men, but boys as young as 15 lied about their age to join, fighting for what they were told was a mission that would bring them the ‘thanks of a grateful nation’. The young men who participate in The Long Walk are each representing their home states. The youngest may be in fact be 15. Some see the walk as glorious. Some see it as their way out of poverty. Some are doing it to impress their elders. Others see it as a method to dispel the ‘epidemic of laziness’ that the Major (Mark Hamill) barks at them, saying it’s overtaken the country. The Major plays an important role in one character’s decision to put his name into the Long Walk lottery.
Each of the young men, and there are 50 of them on this walk, know that only one of them will survive.They’ve seen the broadcasts.They’re brutal. There is no end. There is no finish line. Sit down, you’re shot. Running off the road gets you a bullet to the brain. Contestants walk until there’s only one man still standing. The men are dehumanized by the Major, identified by numbers instead of names. It’s up to the contestants themselves to find common ground, find humanity. And some do, becoming a band of brothers, uniting as soldiers against insane directives from their commanding officer.
The two main contestants are Raymond Garraty, #47 (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries #23 (David Jonsson).Peter is the philosopher in the group, seeking the light in what is a very dark road. Garraty is the therapist, urging the contestants to go just one more step. To do it for the team. The only way for a contestant’s walk to end is with a bullet. Although Garraty and McVries become close friends during the walk, they know that only one will be the eventual victor. Their friendship, the ebb and flow that develops between the two is reminiscent of the Tony Curtis/Sidney Poitier award-winning classic, The Defiant Ones, though in that film, the actors are physically chained together.
Some walkers choose the time of their death. A few, after suffering broken limbs, scream against the inhumanity of what’s coming for them in the next 10 seconds. As the walk progresses, and the men become closer, the gore-filled deaths, the losses of each of their friends becomes increasingly personal. King ramps up the visual horror in the story, but we know it cannot come close to the actual horrors that US servicemen experience during ground wars. There are visual clues sprinkled in the background to illuminate King’s personal stance on the draft. War and morality ls reflected in many of his other works, including Hearts In Atlantis.As a student, King was active in the anti-war movement. Because of its extremely violent visuals, The Long Walk was the one King story that he thought would never reach the screen. He believed the depiction of a totalitarian society, one that accepts and glorifies the violence of the Walk, would be an insurmountable deterrent to getting the film on screen.
However, once it was in the hands of Director Francis Lawrence, who previously helmed four of the Hunger Games films, the story found its director. The Long Walk is not for the faint-hearted - exactly as King intended.
