Gripping and brutal, but what was the point?
Film critic Jason Evans is on a mission to tell you everything you need to know about movies in less time than it takes to walk a block. His reviews are exactly 100 words long (99 is too short while 101 is just excessive). Here is his 100-word review of The Long Walk.
The Premise: In an economically ravaged future America, one
of the only ways to get out of poverty is to win a reality TV contest called The
Long Walk. 50 young men are chosen, one from each state, with the simple
mandate to walk – never going slower than 3 miles per hour – until only one man
is left standing. That winner will get fabulous riches as well as anything they
wish for. All the others, the ones who slow down or cannot continue walking,
will be shot and killed. The desperate men who are competing include Ray
Garrity (Cooper Hoffman, Licorice Pizza and Saturday Night) and Peter McVries (David
Jonsson of Alien Romulus), who find themselves becoming best friends despite the fact that at least one of them must die. The film also stars Mark Hamill (Star Wars) and Ben
Wang (Karate Kid: Legends). It is based on a Stephen King book and is directed
by Francis Lawrence (I am Legend, and four of The Hunger Games films).
The 100-words: A brutal, uncompromising film that is hard to
watch and yet impossible to pull your eyes away from. The acting is uniformly
outstanding, Jonsson and Hoffman are magnetic and real. The story does not get
into why society needs this or the psychology of why anyone would volunteer for
this torturous contest. It only wants us to live the agony alongside these
compelling characters. I get that choice, but didn’t love it. There are times
this death march feels pointless and gruesome and we never get anything resembling
satisfying answers. A strong film, but it needed more to be great.
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