🎬 #218 Straightforward.
Slightly related to the post about short stories becoming feature films, this week’s choice is an adaptation from a novel by Stephen King. It shares the same kinds of story idea that really appeal to me. It’s got a slightly science fiction-bent, placed in a. time that is unknown, framing a concept that is of this world yet importantly different. It’s building layers based on a reality we are familiar with. All the hallmarks of the type of story adaptation that really excites and inspires me.
Please enjoy
Bry
FILM: The Long Walk
2025
Dir Francis Lawrence
1 hr 48 mins
What you’ll notice about the film is that it wastes no time getting into the meat of the story. We’re introduced to the central characters through the main character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, Cooper Hoffman, and he becomes our entry point into the world. Through him, we meet the other characters, who are all partaking in the long walk, which is a sort of really slow, ‘Running Man’-style contest that’s broadcast. The contest is incredibly simple: the last person to be alive after the long walk wins one wish and riches beyond their imagination, as the characters describe it. Theories about the long walk are revealed throughout the film, what it’s actually all about, whether or not people have a choice. The information and ideas are released very gradually, building a bit of a snapshot of the larger state of the world after ‘the war’ has ended.
I’ve always been a big fan of Francis Lawrence, but I have yet to really see his Hunger Games series of films, and this is a kind of not-too-dissimilar concept. What I love about it is that it’s so straightforward. It is a strong central conceit, and he lets it play out in its straightforwardness. There are no extraneous cutaways, for example, to people watching the broadcast, and the only real hints of it that we get are quick intercuts to the camera lenses mounted on vehicles, or the fact that, at night, the scene has to be lit by a moving rig on the back of a truck or tank. It’s all very self-contained. We’re placed in the role of the contestants, so we don’t see, nor need to, anything of how the rest of the world or the rest of the country experiences it as a show.
The only ‘TV’ theatricality is the appearance of The Major, who screams equal parts motivation and scare tactics at the group of contestants, like an interstitial bad guy reminding the audience and contestants what’s at stake. Lawrence’s approach is very stripped back, almost mechanistic, in a good way. His strict framing and almost pure ‘documentation’ of the events make the atmosphere all the more dread-filled. The film marches on and commands us to keep up, taking in the horrors that unfold as more contestants succumb to the softness of their humanness. It’s a lean and powerful watch that gives Lawrence’s sandbox a strict border to exhibit just how clean a storyteller he is.