BY ROGER WATSON
Scoring a well-deserved 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Long Walk (2025) is the most dystopian of dystopian films. Written by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) the title describes the content of the film perfectly.
Set in the 1970s and following a major war, the United States has become a military dictatorship. Morale in the country is poor and, to bolster it and restore some pride in the American people, an annual walk is held which is described as a walk without a finish line.
The objective of the walk is to see which of 50 young men can walk the furthest. The last man standing is the winner of a considerable cash prize and granted one wish. But this is no ordinary walk.
The competitors may not simply drop out due to exhaustion, and they must maintain a minimum walking speed. The walk is supervised by the military and as the major overseeing the event explains, played by Mark Hamill, failure to maintain the minimum speed will result in three warnings.
If speed is not then picked up, the unlucky competitor has ‘bought his ticket’. He is dispatched by a bullet to the head. Competitors may not step off the road on to the verge or a pavement or they are machine-gunned down. Running away is not an option. Warnings are cumulative but each one can be cancelled by an hour of walking at the minimum speed.
The film spends little time on preliminaries and back stories. One boy is dropped off by his mother who, at the last minute, becomes very distressed and urges him not to take part. But this occupies only the first few minutes of the film at which point we are unaware of what the consequences of failure are.
The instructions are issued and the walk begins, each participant wearing a dog tag with their number on it and a bracelet whereby their walking speed is monitored. Friendships and rivalries develop early, as do the summary executions. The viewer is not spared the details as heads explode and brains and blood fly.
As the film progresses you begin to learn exactly what the consequences – apart from sudden death – are of participating in the long walk. There are no exceptions to the rules. Thus, stopping to tie a shoelace results in a warning, if you drop something you cannot go back to retrieve it and there is no stopping to pee or poop.
Peeing can be achieved by walking backwards and spraying those behind you. Pooping must be done quickly. One poor chap has diarrhoea. Again, we are not spared the details as he repeatedly squats to evacuate, gaining a warning each time, until the contents of his head are evacuated courtesy of a bullet.
Despite the premise of the story and the inevitability that only the winner will remain alive, somehow, you cannot believe that only one of the two main protagonists, who are very supportive of each other, will remain alive. The fact that they bolster each other with ‘you can make it’, given that if the other does then the loser will be lying on the road, minus most of his head, seems at odds with the competitive theme of the story. Possibly, under the circumstances, it is better to make friends than enemies.
It is also at odds with the prevailing culture – especially in movieland – that it is only males who are competing. Despite what Stephen King wrote, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine that some ultra-woke script writer would not try to work a woman into the story. I imagine that the concept of a young lady having her brains blown out, assuming she did not triumph, may be too much for audiences.
As the race nears its end, and after 200 miles of walking day and night, the summary executions are more frequent until only our two heroes are left. We learn that one of them knows who the major is and has a justifiable grudge against him. His wish is to be handed one of the soldiers’ rifles with which he plans to kill the major.
This same competitor spots his mother on the pavement as they go through a town and there is a short but harrowing scene where he runs over to her – garnering warnings as he goes – and wants to hug her. If he does, it’s the end. Does he hug her? Does he go on to win? These are the questions that run through the mind of the viewer. To find out, you will have to view The Long Walk yourself.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.