“Want to want with me for a while?”
I requested that we see The Long Walk this weekend and then had to explain to Courtney exactly what the movie might be about.
“It’s a post-apocalyptic world where there is basically a Long Walk that 50 young men volunteer for… and they walk until there is one person left who wins the prize. Oh, and Mark Hamill is a bad guy in it.”
Talk about pretty much going in blind.
While it is about that. I mean, that’s the plot of the movie… that’s also not what the movie is about. I had some questions of my own mostly centered on how the movie would actually be structured. I thought it could make a ton of use out of Flashbacks for either just the main character or perhaps a handful of the other characters. That would help break up what would likely be monotonous walking. They could show some montage that helped show exactly how America got into the state it currently was. Heck, there could be a lot of build up before they even began the walk.
Nope. We pretty much jump right into things from the beginning. And from there we walk.
The thing is it was never monotonous. It was never boring. There was never a point in the 108-minute movie where I wanted them to get to something more exciting.
It was riveting.
Because it was always about the characters. About the bonds these characters make during the course of this horrendous event they all are participating in. Ray and Pete and Art and Hank… our Four Musketeers… they are all real. Each of them trying to joke a bit at the beginning of the Walk to calm their own nerves. Each of them aware that the odds of any one of them actually winning the damn thing was nearly impossible.
“Want to want with me for a while?”
Each death is brutally shown. You might think that is because it is a horror movie and so they need to show the gore, but it is just another way to draw the viewer into the same moments as the characters. It reinforces the realization that there is only one winner.
Watching the movie, I’m rooting for multiple characters… hoping that someway, somehow that maybe they can pull a Hunger Games and two or more could potentially win the damn Walk. I’m rooting against the “bad guy” walkers while also not really wanting them to get their Ticket punched. I’m in agony over some of the characters we only get to meet once or twice before they die.
In fact, the only character I’m actively rooting against is the Major (Mark Hamill in a glorious scene chewing role).
“Want to walk with me for a while?”
The core of the movie is the friendship that develops between Ray and Pete. Two people who would have never met one another in any other circumstance find themselves competing against one another. Two people that should only look out for themselves. Two people who should hope that others around them make a mistake which get them killed.
They are better people than I would be.
Instead, we are moved by Pete’s speech talking about how they are friends even if they’ve only known each other for a couple of days. It’s a friendship that calls to mind tales of war. They are going through the shit together. And even if they both know that only one of them could ever possibly make it out of this Hell alive, they’re in the process of creating a bond very few people could ever understand.
Coming out of the theater, I was floored by what I’d just witnessed. I thought going into it would be a solid to good movie. What I realized instead that this might very well be one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. To have something hit as hard as The Long Walk does while making you feel the characters’ exhaustion. Courtney and I talked about it for the next hour at least, just in amazement at how they pulled it all off.
“Want to walk with me for a while?”
“Yeah… yeah, I do Pete.”