A review of 'The Long Walk'

Here is a film that's based on an old Stephen King novel, one that he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and was published way back in 1979.

- By PHILIP CU UNJIENG

The Long Walk predates Battle Royale and The Hunger Games; so while I’ll describe it as a cross between Stand By Me and The Hunger Games, that would only be for purposes of today’s audiences knowing what to expect.

Directed by Francis Lawrence, who was behind The Hunger Games movies, and with a screenplay by JT Mollner, I will actually give credit for the work they did here, adapting the cumbersome, overstuffed novel into a lean, mean movie. They’ve pared down the excessive number of characters in the novel, trimmed the ‘fat’, and successfully sped up the action. It works in a way that the novel didn’t, and if horror films got proper Oscar attention and respect, this would even be my front-runner for Best Adapted Screenplay.