The Long Walk (2025)

The Long Walk Movie Review

Bear Hands (author)

Hubby Bear

There are cinematic experiences that expand your understanding of the human condition, and then there is The Long Walk, a film that expands your understanding of gastrointestinal logistics. I confess I had never asked myself what it might be like to poop while walking — one does try to maintain certain standards in life — but the film answers the question unbidden, rather like an overly confessional dinner guest who mistakes your polite nodding for encouragement. As for urinating on the move, I regret to report the film offered me no revelations; real life has already provided that education in moments of unfortunate necessity.

There is not a great deal to say about The Long Walk, primarily because the film seems determined to say so little itself. It presents its premise with a stark, almost rude directness. One might call it elegant minimalism; one might also call it a flat surface upon which graduate students will project essays about “the metaphysics of endurance” for decades. The film creates ample room for metaphor — rich, elaborate, desperately imposed metaphor — which may be its cleverest and cruellest trick. For my part, I can’t claim to have read the original book, nor did I intend to before watching the film, and I confess that after watching it, the prospect of spending more time with this story feels less like intellectual enrichment and more like penance.

Still, performances matter, and here The Long Walk has at least one unambiguous virtue: David Jonsson. He remains, as ever, a pleasure to watch — sharp, grounded, quietly magnetic even when the movie around him seems determined to dribble away like sand through a colander. Cooper Hoffman, meanwhile, continues to stand at the intersection of earnest effort and inherited advantage. He is not untalented, no, but one senses that the road ahead of him will remain conspicuously free of potholes — paved, one might say, by the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose shadow is a rather useful shelter to grow in.

In the end, The Long Walk is less a narrative journey than a prolonged observation of misery under immaculate cinematography. It is either admirably simple or unforgivably sparse; the distinction depends largely on one’s tolerance for art that attempts profundity through dehydration. For those seeking emotional catharsis or narrative nourishment, consider packing your own supplies — the film, much like its characters, does not stop to provide them.