Movie Review: The Long Walk — A Marathon of Missed Potential
Movie Review: The Long Walk — A Marathon of Missed Potential
I went in hopeful. No trailers, no spoilers—just vibes and a synopsis. I’ve turned a new leaf lately, skipping trailers because they give away too much. But even with that fresh approach, The Long Walk left me trudging through disappointment.
The premise? Intriguing. A dystopian death march penned by Stephen King under his Richard Bachman alias—his first novel, no less. My buddy Scott, a die-hard King fan, swears the book is brilliant. I wish I had better news for him. I really wanted to like this film.
But let’s be honest: a 1-hour and 48-minute runtime for a story about walking? That’s a tall order. I tried not to overthink it. Maybe there’d be twists, tension, emotional gut punches. Nope. From the moment the characters assembled, the trajectory was painfully obvious—and somehow still worse than expected.
Every minute dragged. The dialogue looped like a broken record: walk, talk, repeat. The emotional range was flatlined. Predictability? Off the charts. The theater crowd shifted in their seats, restless and unimpressed. The film’s pacing was glacial, and the stakes—despite the life-or-death premise—felt hollow. When characters dropped below the mandated 3 mph walk pace and met their fate, I barely blinked. The film had drained them of soul.
Now, I’m a dialogue guy. Give me Usual Suspects, Dead Poets Society, Shawshank, Good Will Hunting—films with heart, conflict, and humanity. And with all of the dialogue The Long Walk was delivering, it had none of that. It was emotionally vacant, narratively limp, and utterly forgettable. Not looking for Oscar worthiness here, just looking for a performance worthy of staying awake and not wanting to walk less than 3 mph to take myself out of the misery here.
The cast did what they could, but the script gave them little to work with. Mark Hamill as The Major? Major letdown. His raspy delivery felt phoned in, like he was reading off cue cards: no menace, convincing he was a true bad ass, no nuance—just cringe. Even the flashback meant to deepen his villainy fell flat. I saw it coming, and the “twist” at the last third of the film was barely a twist at all. Saw this coming too. I had the wrong person picked. There is no way the audience wasn’t on board with my headspace here as well.
By the time the credits rolled, the silence in the theater said it all. No claps, no cheers—just relief that the walk was finally over.
Would I recommend this film? Not unless you’re conducting a sleep study. It’s too long, too talky, and too empty. I’ll be hitting up Scott for his take on the novel, because clearly, the source material deserved better. Maybe I’ll read it myself and find the story this adaptation failed to deliver.
-Jay Katz