The Long Walk directed and produced by Francis Lawrence has a distinct hangover of the Korean web series Squid Games along with Jennifer Lawrence’s Hunger Games: but this movie has bromance with the participants being supportive of each other. The movie isn’t for those who are in the mood for grim stories. For fans of dystopian dramas with socio political commentary, The long Walk is a must watch

Starcast: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Warieng and others

Director and Producer: Francis Lawrence

Genre: Thriller/drama

Based on: Stephen King’s novel The Long Walk

Screenplay: JT Mollner

Producers: Francis Lawrence, Roy Lee, Cameron MacConmy and Steven Schneider

Cinematography: Joe Willems

Music: Jeremaih Fraites

Running time: 1 hour and 48 minutes

The backdrop of Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk is a future of extreme fascism. In a brutal test numerous young men participate in a walk by the same name. In this competition they must maintain a minimum walking pace with no option of slowing down or giving up. If either of the two happens the soldiers would bump them off. Only one winner remains.

The broad themes covered by The Long Walk are false hopes, government dictatorial/fascist ways, economic hardships resulting in numerous men participating and finally resilience of human spirit along with a certain optimism.

A strong aspect of the movie is the haunting dystopian world created by Francis Lawrence along with cinematographer Joe Willems. The atmospherics are truly scary given the current political atmosphere. Francis Lawrence makes the viewers contemplate on how our near future will look like if the fascism continues.

In spite of a mostly bleak picture mention must be made of a strong sense of brotherhood among the men. This specially comes out in the companionship portions featuring Cooper Hoofman’s Ray Garraty and David Jonsson ‘s Peter Mc Vries. For Ray, Peter Mc Vries becomes an important anchor given his emotional turmoil and his reasons for joining the walk.

Inspite of the premise being rooted in capitalist machinery the men are unexpectedly supportive of each other. They urge each other keep on walking no matter what. The conversations have a philosophical tone

Through these men the movie explores different kinds of masculinity starting from Ray. The concept of American dream has also been used well to critique a dystopian society which offers false hope of success.

The actors also do a very fine job in making the viewers feel for them. The ones who stand out though are Cooper Hoofman and David Jonsson. They get the emotional graph of the roles spot on.