The Long Walk Review: Stephen King at His Most Nihilistic Done Justice

Anybody can win. This is the maxim Americans are told, and which they tell themselves, from the cradle to the grave. If you work hard enough, try hard enough, are simply good enough , you too can be a millionaire; a billionaire; or these days an autocrat above the laws of gods and men. Of course to be on the top means, by default, you will have stepped over someone along the way to that finish line tape. It’s a deeper truth that perhaps has never been so vividly visualized as in the new adaptation of Stephen King ’s first completed novel, The Long Walk .

Helmed by lifelong Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence—who tackles King between rounds in the Panem prequel trenches via Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping — The Long Walk movie shrewdly updates the mater