No one wants to see a good Jedi turn bad, but that’s exactly what happens to Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill in The Long Walk, an adaptation of a Stephen King story of the same name. Hamill plays the terrifying major who presides over a group of young men taking part in a barbaric televised contest that requires them to walk continuously at a speed above 3mph or be summarily executed.
The setting for this violent dystopian thriller is a bleak 1970s America in the grip of economic decline that follows an unnamed war. A forerunner to the Hunger Games (the film is directed by Francis Lawrence, who helmed four of the five-film franchise), The Long Walk focuses on the idea of suffering and survival as spectacle. It’s not hard to see the source material’s influence on series like Squid Game or films like Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale.
Written in 1967, King’s story was a heartfelt response to the Vietnam draft and the impact of the war on his generation. Our reviewer Matt Jacobsen found the setting of a dark, inhospitable America a clever inversion that distils many of the familiar themes of the Vietnam movie. Indeed, he points to the deadly road march as reminiscent of GIs trudging through the jungle of Vietnam in 1980s films like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.
