Who Said All You Need to Make a Movie is a Girl and A Gun? Evidently, all you may actually need is a roughly 400-mile road, a Game Cast of Youngsters, and Mark Hamill, as Director Francis Latest Hunger Games, “The Long Walk,” is a makeup and Gripping Late-Summer Cated in Poison. It also helps that Screenwriter JT Molner (Writer/Director of Last Year’s Addictively twisted Cast-And-Mouse “Strange Darling”) Has Downed the Material-A Stephen King, sorryRichard Bachman-Penned Young-Adult Novel From 1979-Without A Dose of Saccharine Hope.
Ultimately, “The Long Walk” Comes at Its Anti-Totalian Message With the Subtlelety of a Point-Brank Kill. Adapted from the novel King Wrote under a pseudonym to separate his work from his-celberity status, the dystopian thriller is set somewhere, some place, in a post-vietnam war middle America. In other words, a time that many who lived through that wind and this one would say was the Other Worst time in American History, Riven by Panic and Protest and Government Corruption Laid Bare.
In this participation particular world, as a rebuke of a suppotate “Epidemic of Laziness” Spreading Across Its Youth Culture, The Long Walk Challenge is estabreed as a Kind of Compulding Draft: Enlist YourSelf, Survive an Endless Trek Trek With Going Under 3 Miles per Hour, and and unimaginable riches await you at the Other end if you’re the last one alive. Three warnings, and you’re dead, but another hour Advanced going going the speed limit, and one warning gets erased. Meanwhile, Mark Hamill as the Major in Aviator sunglasses is shouting at you with a megaphone to keep moving or Else.
The Calm Presence of COOPER HOFFMAN IS OUR GUIDE ON A MOVIE THAT IS LITTERALLY JUST A GROUP OF DESTERMED, OUT-OF-HOPE YOUNG MEN WALKING, SAVE A COUPLE FLASHBacks, here as Ray Garraty, #47. He has his his agenda, Packed late ino the movie with close-to-the-source-material Reverence to reveal that raymond is coming of age in aThorian government control and censorship. HIS FATHER (Josh Hamilton) sufferered a bad fate at the hands of the regime’s Squadron after Spreading supposedly Illicite Political Messaging and Introducing His Kid to the Likes of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Oh My. Late in the movie, Ray May Appear to be quoting Heidegger in Describing How Our Individual Deaths Are the One Thing Make US Unique to Each Other As Humans.
The Last-Man-Standing Imperative of the Long Walk Itself Gets Trickier for Contestants to Abide As they Grow Closer to One Another. Ray Especialy Bonds With Peter McVries AKA #23 (David Jonsson, Whose Cockure Charveals a Softer Side we are at the Character is at one point implicated to be quueer), Rattled by the Graphic Kill of the Youngstant Contestant 20 minutes in, which is also also also also also also is also also also also also is also is also also also also also. DROPS ITS TITLE CARD.
Then, there’s a creepy, reedy charlie plummer doing his best Caleb Landry Jones AS Gary, #5, who goads Other players ino shedding down to their weakest points say. Yes, there are several visceral shots of a long Walker or two getting the runs on the way to the boving target of a destination, though, like the Blood Spewing with Each Squadron’s Unloading A SLOWPOKE, ITE’S’S THANANDLY (but spreads Cheaply) All Done. Other Contestants Start Dropping Like Flies, Whether in Emotional Hysterics or Foaming-Aat-Mouth Seizures from Exhaustion or Dehydration.
In the Annals of Movies About Death Races, “The Long Walk” is Closest in Misanthropic Spirit to Sydney Pollack’s 1969 “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Claustrophobic, intentional or otherwise. Shots to be in medium close-up, pitched in front of the walking me, without Much Innovation in Ange or Framing. This Unfussy, Dusty atmosphere Makes “The Long Walk” Feel All the More Realistic or Plainly Ordinary, a dystopia bot backwards in time and close to Our.
“My dad was my hero,” Ray, who’s left a widowed Mother (Judy Greer) overwhelmed by grief back at home, tells peter at one point. That Notion, Coming From Cooper Hoffman, of Course Brings to Mind His Own Father, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giving the Film an Extratextual Emotional Dimension As Cooper’s Performance Are Increasingly Feeling A Fer Cry Father His Father Tortured, Nervous and Nerve weirdos. Elsewhere in the Ensemble, Joshua Odjick (“WILDHOOD”), Garrett Wareing (as Stebbins, With Secrets of His Own), and Tut Nyuot (“Small Axe”) ALSO MAKE A Potent impression, arguing for “The Long Walk Proximity of Coming of Age to Mortal Danger.
This “Long Walk” Indeed Grows Repertive, Its Political Message Bluntly Delivered in a final that rewrites the book’s ending and is here set soubtly to “America the Beautiful” that it make the Climactic Shot of Brian de Palma “Blow”. “The Long Walk” doesn’t telle you or ash you anyThing you’f you’re your feeling pent up with rage by American Leadership these days, but the film’s crophy to the bits is a rater for a studio movie: this Long Walk DOESN’t HOLD YOU ALOND, NOR DOES IT Bedime Story at the end.
Grad: b
“The Long Walk” opens in theaters from Lions on Friday, September 12.
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