#59: THE LONG WALK

 

STARRING: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Roman Griffin Davis, Josh Hamilton, Judy Greer and Mark Hamill. Based on the book The Long Walk by Stephen King. Screenplay by JT Mollner. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Budget £20 million. Walking time 108 minutes.

Get ready for the funniest film of the summer! A film of hope, laughter, tears, and the strength of friendship. 

In the near future, America is struggling from the effects of a civil war that plunged it into financial ruin and poverty and under the boot-heel of a fascistic state that suppresses free-speech and liberty, so just a couple of years from now then. To distract the unwashed masses, an annual tournament is held that sees 50 randomly chosen young men set out on 'The Long Walk', a race with no end run until only one boy survives, his prize - untold wealth and the granting of one wish. There are few rules, the main one being don't walk slower than 3 miles an hour. You have three lives and if you lose all three you get shot in the head right there in the road and then and left to rot on the tarmac. Like I said, an hilarious laugh riot of a film filled with shits and giggles, seriously, and literally. The film follows the young men focusing on five in particular and over the course of the next 108 minutes you'll get to watch each and every one of them die at the hands of an indifferent, nameless gun-totting military escort lead by 'The Major' (Mark Hamill). 

And that's it. Friendships are made and young men die as they walk for five days and over 300 miles. Laugh, I nearly cried.

Bleak, nasty, relentless and depressing. It's a hard watch and yet again reminds me that Hollywood really hate the young. What is it about post apocalyptic fiction that features so many young people getting killed for the pleasure of the old? 

Another 'not a bad film', far from it, but it's a hard watch, well acted and staged but one of those films that you'll watch once and never again. Unless of course you're a masochist. 

7/10