The Long Walk (2025)
Stephen King is the most renowned horror author still living, his numerous works of literature having given birth to some of the most legendary horror films and their antagonists. Notably, his affinity for horror seems to almost invariably be rooted in the realm of the supernatural, whether it be a socially alienated teenage girl exploiting her dormant telekinesis to exact vengeance on the sadistic students who've bullied her her entire life, a recovering alcoholic patriarch becoming possessed by the spirits of the hotel in which he's taken a job as a winter caretaker, or an Indian burial ground that restores life to recently deceased pets with the caveat that they make their owners realize that "sometimes, dead is better."
But sometime in 1966-1967, during his freshman year at the University of Maine, King began writing what would become his first-ever novel, and while it fit into the genre of horror, the cause was rooted entirely in the here and now. Even the most insane visions of horror stem from personal anxieties that reflect the era in which they're produced, and The Long Walk is no exception. At the time of its conception, young men, particularly those not in college, were being drafted into the military to fly across the world and fight in the Vietnam War. While King himself had nothing to worry about, the sight of people his age, some of whom he may have known personally, being removed from the safety of their lives and required to partake in a war they neither asked for nor supported made his skin crawl. Had he not made the potentially life-saving decision to enroll in college, King might have heard his number called on the television as well, and he may not have survived to create all the horror stories that have become his legacy. And so began the journey of his debut novel, a political allegory of the senselessness of young men dying or losing their limbs in war for nothing, written to channel the author's fear and disgust over his fellow men's forced sacrifices into his God-given gift for writing. Written under King's pseudonym, Richard Bachman, The Long Walk was published in 1979, over a decade after he wrote it.
In 1988, George A. Romero, who, 20 years earlier, had set the standard for the modern zombie movie with his debut, Night of the Living Dead, was the first writer-director considered to direct an adaptation of King's debut novel. A tantalizing possibility that, for whatever reason, never saw the light of day. In 2007, Frank Darabont secured the rights to a cinematic adaptation. He promised that he would "get to it one day" and planned to make it on a low budget, stating that it would be "weird, existential, and very contained." Previously, Darabont had demonstrated his penchant for blending the visceral thrills and heart-pounding suspense of an alien-invasion story with real-world themes of political experimentation and the ramifications of human fear, distrust, and paranoia in The Mist, itself an adaptation of a Stephen King novella. Both Romero and Darabont would have been outstanding candidates to bring King's political horror allegory to big-screen life because, with their aforementioned, genre-defining classics, they asserted themselves as capable of telling stories about a group of ordinary citizens brought together in a confined setting and put under attack by an otherworldly threat that brings out the best and worst aspects of their shared humanity. The only difference is the threat in The Long Walk doesn't take the form of flesh-eating ghouls freshly risen from the grave or aliens whose portal has been split open by the reckless curiosity of scientists. Rather, the horror takes the shape of the United States government, exerting their unlimited power to manipulate the young men of their country to kill themselves in the pursuit of money, America's greatest need and obsession.
In April 2018, New Line Cinema was next in line to adapt the adaptation, with James Vanderbilt attached to write and produce alongside Bradley Fischer and William Sherak through their Mythology Entertainment banner. Their attempt was met with the same nonexistent fate as their two predecessors. In May 2019, Andre Ovredal, one of the most prominent filmmakers working in the horror genre today, was falsely announced as the director. Finally, by November 2023, Lionsgate Films was accurately revealed to be producing the adaptation, with Francis Lawrence directing from a screenplay by JT Mollner. Lawrence was an obvious choice to direct because he had directed every installment in the Hunger Games franchise save the original. Like The Long Walk, The Hunger Games paints a dystopian society in which the youth of America are indoctrinated into an annual, government-sanctioned, televised competition and required to fight for their lives before a spellbound audience licking their lips for the thrill of bloodshed. All Lawrence had to do was crank the level of intensity and violence past YA fantasy action to that of legitimate horror. Meanwhile, Mollner was still riding the wave of critical acclaim for writing and directing the 2023 horror film, Strange Darling. Together, Lawrence and Mollner have established themselves as a match made in heaven.
Harrowing, heartbreaking, gruesome, yet somehow tinged with hope, The Long Walk is an excruciating depiction of a country in financial and ethical turmoil whose relentless onslaught of carnage is presented with solemnity and counterbalanced by a heartwarming message of brotherhood.
In a dystopian version of the United States, in an undisclosed time period, a civil war has ravaged the country 19 years prior and reduced its citizens to a severe economic depression from which they still haven't recovered. In an alleged effort to restore a sense of patriotism and work ethic among young men amidst a so-called "epidemic of laziness," the government, replaced by a totalitarian military regime led by an elderly man referred to as "The Major" (Mark Hamill), has created an annual, televised competition named The Long Walk. 50 young men, eligible at the age of 18, one from each state, are selected voluntarily by lottery to compete in the hope of restoring financial prosperity to their broken country. The rules are as straightforward as they are physically grueling: walk until you drop. Each walker must maintain a speed of three miles per hour. If they fall below that threshold, they're issued three warnings by armed guards who trail them from the luxury of their military tanks. After the third and final warning, they are issued their "ticket," a euphemism for a bullet to the back of their head (as in, a ticket to the Pearly Gates, get it?). There is no finish line anywhere in sight. In order to win, you have to become the last man standing, after which you will be compensated for your bravery and dedication with a life-changing supply of money, along with the granting of one wish of your choosing. If you step off the road in an attempt to escape, your ticket will be issued without warning. If you walk for an hour without falling below the threshold, one warning will be reduced. During the walk, you're supplied with an unlimited serving of food and water.
This year, the fresh batch of walkers include hometown hero Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), Peter McVries (David Jonsson), Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), Hank Olson (Ben Wang), Richard Harkness (Jordan Gonzalez), Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), and the suspiciously youthful Adam Curley White (Roman Griffin Davis).
The Long Walk boasts a plot that made it not only my most anticipated original horror film of 2025, but in the last seven years since Hereditary. Thrillingly inventive, achingly heartfelt, and blissfully straightforward in its conception and execution, The Long Walk shares a few similarities with a previous Stephen King adaptation, Stand by Me. Much like how Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans' screenplay smartly narrowed its focus to its quartet of preteen protagonists, deviating only occasionally to catch up with the more mischievous adventures of the teenage rivalry gang, JT Mollner maintains an intimate focus on a limited number of characters. Naturally, with a total of 50 young men on the titular journey, the majority are bound to be reduced to undeveloped, line-free background figures, with only a select few brought to the forefront to achieve audience engagement and meet a standard runtime. True to its concept and title, The Long Walk primarily takes place on the road as these boys turn themselves into men, walking nonstop and making conversation to dilute the tedium of the one-rule contest.
Like The Belko Experiment, another body-count horror film in which characters are thrust into a competition for survival that can only end with a single survivor, The Long Walk begins on the morning of the titular competition, with obvious protagonist Ray driven to the starting point at the Canada-United States border by his heartbroken mother, Ginnie (Judy Greer). Mollner opts to get right down to the nitty-gritty of King's premise, wasting little time on backstories or depictions of what life looked like prior to this civil war that paved the way for The Long Walk. However, Mollner's right-here-right-now approach is interspersed with two flashbacks to offer insight into Ray's motivation for enlisting in the walk and the life-defining backstory tragedy that brought him here in the first place. Using King's story as his basis, Mollner examines the desperate measures young men will take and endure in the name of financial stability and the masculine desire to provide for their families. While never stated explicitly, it's evident why women are excluded from enlisting in the competition. This is a regime that recognizes only men as the protectors and providers of their loved ones, and therefore The Long Walk, like Stand by Me, features only a group of males as its protagonists.
However, Mollner also uses this simple walk-or-die concept to reaffirm the beauty of small moments in life and the priceless value of friendship, even those that are inherently short-lived. These boys understand that, in order to win this endurance contest, 49 of them must meet the bloody end of a rifle, but that doesn't stop them from forming relationships that will endure in the winner's memory for the rest of his life and flash before the eyes of the rest as they take their final breath.
Only seven of the 50 contestants are afforded character development and substantial screen time. Ray serves as our entry point into this grim new world order. Through a rather rushed flashback that bypasses the buildup of tension in the name of spelling out character motivation as quickly as possible, it's revealed that Ray is driven by a single-minded, nonnegotiable desire for vengeance against The Major for assassinating his father in front of him and his mother for rejecting his fascistic ideals. In his mind, Ray believes that following through on his goal will initiate a change in the system, but his flaw is that he's too blinded by rage and resentment to recognize his own selfishness, making the same impulsive mistake his father made by abandoning his mother out of the sin of pride. Pete is the yin to Ray's yang, a beacon of hope and boundless positivity who understands the value of the little things in life. But he didn't always think this way. When he was a child, his parents died in a war, and he was taken in by an abusive, alcoholic uncle, who he witnessed die in a puddle of his own vomit. As a result, Pete originally viewed life through an angered, nihilistic lens. After picking a fight with the wrong, bladed stranger who left a permanent scar across his cheek and neck, Pete experienced a renewed lease on life. This near-death experience was the best thing that ever happened to him, motivating him to become the best version of himself and always choose love over hate. Life is too short and precious to spend it angry and alone, after all.
Upon meeting Ray shortly before commencement, Pete feels an almost-instant affinity for him, and the two strangers quickly develop a brotherly bond that recalls that of Gordie Lachance and Chris Chambers. While Chris and Gordie were best friends with Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio, it was abundantly clear that their friendship originated years before either of them met Teddy or Vern. Theirs was the bond that formed the glue holding Stand by Me together. You could see it in the glances they exchanged, the platonic love emanating from their eyes and smiles. It was a love unspoken yet blindingly powerful. Similarly, while Ray and Pete develop friendships with Art, Hank, Billy, and eventually Gary, none are as beautiful or moving as the unexplainable connection between Ray and Pete. These knuckleheads may have just met at the starting line, same time as everyone else, and they know this walk can only end with one of them alive, but the love that grows between them is strong enough to transcend the physical limitations of this lifetime. Nonetheless, like Chris Chambers before him, Pete is a natural-born group leader who uplifts the spirits of his fellow walkers, regardless of whether he's formed a relationship with them, and isn't shy about showing affection to them, whether by giving them a consoling pat on the back or propping them up to prevent them from falling asleep. Pete is not simply out for himself, and he's extremely passive and patient, evinced by his lack of offense when Ray momentarily lashes out and accuses him of secretly hoping for his ticket to get punched.
Art is a religious fellow who prefers not to curse, regardless of its acceptance in the Bible. He would rather use the word, "crap," over "shit." Having grown up in poverty in Baton Rouge, Art's goal is to walk himself and his grandmother out of poverty and fly to the moon. Hank is loquacious and playfully vulgar, following the equally silly, truthful, and poignant motto that there are three absolutes in life: "a good meal, a good screw, and a good shit, and that's all." As a somewhat grossly intriguing quirk, he retains a piece of gum throughout the walk to avoid littering and decides to make it his lifeline. "When she goes, I go." His alleged wish is for 10 naked ladies, arguing that using his unlimited wealth to buy them would be the disgusting equivalent of prostitution.
Gary begins as the villain prevalent in many a Stephen King horror tale. At the start of the walk, he makes it his plan to antagonize his fellow walkers as a way to psych out the competition. Clearly, he adheres to the motto, "Every man for himself." However, after inadvertently causing a fatality via mocking the name of Rank Sanders (Daymon Wrightly) and generically accusing his mother of prostitution, Gary experiences a bout of soul-crushing remorse and guilt that persists throughout the remainder of the walk. As his carefully cultivated veneer of toughness and cruelty begins to crack, to the surface swims deep-seated feelings of loneliness and a lifelong longing for friendship. In his own words, Gary never found a tribe in school, and the second he's accepted into the group by the empathetic and forgiving Ray, all that useless anger-fueled bullying gives way to gratitude. Up until that point, Gary vigorously and repeatedly denies having caused Rank's murder, smacking himself in the face after Pete refers to him as "killer," suggesting an undiagnosed mental illness. Billy is the most physically fit of the contestants. An antisocial loner who subscribes to the "Every man for himself" mentality, he possesses a suspiciously intimate knowledge of The Long Walk which he refuses to explain to his fellow walkers until he reaches his breaking point. By that time, his walls begin to finally descend, giving into the power of brotherhood to achieve a sense of internal peace and admitting to his love of rain. Richard doesn't last long, but in the fleeting time we spend with him, we learn that he's writing a novel about The Long Walk, with the goal of earning his riches off his insider perspective as opposed to coasting off the dubious victory of outliving his fellow competitors.
2025 has turned out to be a banner year for the horror genre, with four entries having made it into the 2026 Academy Awards ceremony, and one in particular breaking the record for most nominations with a total of 16, including Best Picture. Regrettably, the voters missed out on making The Long Walk number five, especially in the inaugural category of Best Casting. The primary cast is flawlessly assembled, each delivering performances as powerful physically as they are emotionally. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson initiate and sustain a profoundly heartwarming fraternal chemistry, exemplified by the constant smile of appreciation on Jonsson's face as he stares at Hoffman and the way they hold each other up, physically and spiritually. They make the greatest pair of cinematic comrades this side of Wil Wheaton and the late, great River Phoenix. When Ray apologizes to Pete for questioning his integrity, Pete accepts with the graciousness and understanding of a lifelong best friend. It's magical onscreen work. Hoffman lost his father, Philip Seymour, at the age of 10 to a combined drug overdose, and when Ray eulogizes his father as his hero and moral compass, you can feel Hoffman simultaneously expressing an identical sentiment for his real-life one.
The entirety of the cast, however, pours their hearts, souls, and bodies into these roles, tracing their characters' shared arcs from initial enthusiasm to steadily mounting anger and exhaustion, panting with exertion, the energy slowly draining from their once-youthful faces. Hoffman boasts a most unorthodox physique for the lead role, carrying a moderate excess of body fat that stands in contrast to the lean, muscular physique characteristic of a typical movie star. This lends an extra ounce of authenticity to the filmmakers' nightmarish vision of a desolate future or past. Two of the most uplifting moments of group bonding occur in the form of the walkers singing "Oh, My Darling, Valentine" in unison and chanting "Fuck The Long Walk and fuck The Major!"
Of the supporting cast, two actors leave an indelible impression. First off, this is a Judy Greer the world has not seen since her tearful final scene in The Descendants. Beginning in 2013, Greer made her debut in the horror genre as the gym teacher every bullied student wishes they had, Rita Desjardin, in Kimberly Pierce's remake of Carrie. Five years later, she returned as the daughter of one of the most iconic final women in horror history, Karen Nelson, in David Gordon Green's sequel to Halloween. As in those previous horror films, Greer is once again playing a mother/maternal figure as Ginnie Garraty, Ray's distraught widowed mother. Without a shadow of doubt, Greer uses the three scenes in which she appears to deliver the greatest and most gut-wrenching performance of her horror career to date.
From her first shot as she drives Hoffman to the starting line in the opening scene, Greer commands the screen with a painfully precise portrayal of maternal anguish. Ginnie is a woman not even remotely recovering from the recent assassination of her husband, William (Josh Hamilton), and here she is sending her only son off to walk in a contest in which only one out of 50 men will be spared the same fate of a bullet to the head. Upon arriving at the border, she quietly implores Ray to withdraw from the competition, despite knowing that the final date to do so has passed. As she says what may be her final goodbye to the last remaining man in her life, after gifting him a bag of homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, Greer attempts a brave face that quickly crumbles to bits once the reality fully sets in, during which point she envelops Hoffman in the desperate embrace of a mother sending her son off to war, hopeful of his return but clear-eyed about the unlikeliness of that prospect. Watching him go, Greer stifles her cries in both of her hands.
The last time Mark Hamill played a horror villain, it was as an AI reimagining of Chucky the Killer Doll in the remake of Child's Play. The Long Walk represents both his second whack at such a character and a chance at redemption. Hamill portrays The Major, the overseer of The Long Walk who greets the fresh batch of walking corpses each year, lays out the rules, and artificially inflates their patriotism and dedication while accompanying them from the privileged position of his tank. A long time ago, this is a role that would have been tailor-made for the late R. Lee Ermey, whose bread and butter consisted of playing loudmouthed, domineering drill sergeant figures, none more terrifying than his scene-dominating performance as Sheriff Hoyt in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its prequel, The Beginning. But you know what? Ermey played enough of those for one lifetime, and while Hamill may not fully emulate his natural authority and volatile temperament, he has nonetheless redeemed himself for enabling one of the worst remakes in modern horror.
Hamill delivers line after line of empty patriotic rhetoric in a gruff, sonorous voice and hides his humanity behind a pair of black shades, never once betraying an underlying sadism. He keeps his face locked in an emotionless expression, performing The Major as a stony-faced and cold-blooded personification of authoritarianism. Unlike Ermey, who had a field day foaming at the mouth at any slight to his self-righteous authority, Hamill maintains composure and a soft-spoken, affected understanding while facing down the barrel of a carbine and encourages the rebellious taunts and righteous indignation of his contestants.
A lesser script would have painted William Garraty's sacrifice in one color, hailing it as a noble way to stick it to the man and go out on his own terms. Mollner is smart enough to consider the selfishness of his choice. As put forward by Pete, he ultimately chose his moral philosophy and commitment to individuality over his family. Was standing up for what he believed in really worth abandoning his wife and son? Because he's only depicted in one flashback, which begins moments before his accepted execution, Hamilton isn't permitted to imbue William with any of the paternal tenderness or endearingly cringe-inducing humor that he brought to his standout supporting performance of Mark Day in Eighth Grade, relegating him to more of a symbol for the importance of having the courage of your convictions than a fully formed character.
Gary's offer to share some of his potential victory money with Hank's widow, and his offense at not being asked, unveils a previously unseen humanity and private craving for belonging. Revelations of the walkers' wishes help distinguish them from one another, shining a light on their personalities and backstories while offsetting the non-cinematic tedium that could easily arise from a plotline revolving around walking and talking. After the death of one walker early in the competition, Pete divulges to Ray, "I keep hoping that part gets easier," to which Ray grimly replies, "That's what I'm afraid of." In the briefest exchange consisting of two lines, one from each character, Mollner delivers a message that's sobering, contemplative, and pithy: the only thing worse than feeling grief over the senseless, impersonal snuffing out of innocent human lives would be desensitization to the horror thereof.
The biggest misstep in the dialogue is Mollner's choice to momentarily reduce Ray to a mouthpiece for his political commentary. Early in the walk, Ray expounds a theory to Pete that, despite the fact that The Long Walk is technically voluntary, the government has backed its citizens into such a hopeless corner that the only logical means of potential escape is to enlist. Therefore, to what degree is it really a choice? Instead of trusting the audience to reach that conclusion on their own, Mollner spoon-feeds us with an inflamed monologue.
At its heart, The Long Walk is a body-count horror movie whose plot openly necessitates the cold-blooded, albeit generally painless, murders of 49 young men one by one. While neither Mollner nor Lawrence turn a blind eye to the inhumane savagery inherent in King's take-no-prisoners text, neither do they wallow in its potential for splattery exploitation. The initial kill, which is faced by the youngest competitor, played memorably by the breakout star of Jojo Rabbit, is depicted in graphic, up-close detail to convey the hitherto unseen consequence of breaking the three-miles-per-hour rule. Mollner uses the relatable, excruciating pain of a charley horse to build an unbearable level of empathic apprehension, with Lawrence zeroing in on the facial contortions of Roman Davis. When the filmmakers are ready to pull the trigger, literally and figuratively, they release the tension with a gunshot to the back of Curley's head, which exits through his right cheek, blowing his jaw clean off. The CGI, combined with the blast of the carbine, is jarring and blood-curdling in its realism and suddenness. Another director might have cut away at the moment of impact, relying merely on the strength of his witnessing actor's reaction shot to convey the horror of the visual. Lawrence is clearly not such a director, and this strong-stomached gorehound is perfectly fine with that.
By design, the method of execution is as uniform as the plot itself: a single carbine shot, typically administered to the back of the head, but anywhere in the body that causes instant death. In a most disturbing detail that further illustrates the toxicity of blind obedience, the soldiers will prolong the suffering of a walker, not out of sadism, but compliance with the arbitrary rules set forth by the regime. If a walker's speed drops below the threshold for any reason, they're given three warnings, each of which lasts 10 seconds. After one unfortunate soul has his legs run over by a tank, his executioner forces him to wait the full 30 seconds before putting him out of his misery, as if to give him the opportunity to stand up and resume his walk without legs. These soldiers adhere so slavishly to their own rulebook that their devotion to authority overrides their common sense or any remaining shred of humanity.
Willems juxtaposes the desolation of the war-ravaged country with the austere beauty of the surrounding countryside around which the walk transpires, echoing Pete's appreciation of the small pleasures afforded by life. As the competitors undergo their increasingly grueling, never-ending march to either the arbitrary finish line or Pearly Gates, Willems alleviates the suffocating atmosphere of encroaching death with aerial shots of green, leafy trees in the forest, wide shots of the baby-blue, cloudy sky above, and bright green grass, refreshing lake, and deserted, interminable stretch of road below. Even in the midst of life's most agonizing challenges, as innocent people die every day around us, Willems uses his camera to say, there is always beauty if you take a moment to look up and around, beauty that could never be destroyed by the pulling of a trigger or chaos of a war. In nighttime shots, Willems films the walkers in silhouette against a dimming, dark blue sky or the dots of dazzling yellow emanating from the headlights of the soldiers' military tanks and street lamps that line the sidewalks.
He also pans his camera across more disturbing images to convey the grimness of the journey: the decomposing carcass of a cow sprawled on the side of the road, enveloped in cobwebs; a crow impaled on the barbed-wire fence of a cemetery, evoking King's future preoccupation with haunted pet cemeteries; a one-eyed cat resting on a row of mailboxes, sniffing the body odor of the men as they walk past; little boys sitting still on their bikes, watching mournfully in the knowledge that someday, they may find themselves in the same situation; a family of three sitting around a picnic table in the middle of a cornfield; a black-dressed woman standing outside her church, visually signifying the futility of organized religion; a police officer saluting the men from the side of the road, indifferent to the double middle fingers returned by Gary.
The majority of The Long Walk is presented in tracking shots, following the characters as they endure one step after another, each more grueling than the last. The camera tracks the protagonists in group shots, but mainly Ray and Pete in medium two shots to signify that their bond is the strongest and most meaningful. Willems holds it steady as the men trudge onward, creating a borderline nauseating, motion-fueled momentum. A wide shot of a rainbow represents the glimmer of hope that awaits the winner, strengthening Ray's resolve to push himself forward and resist the easy temptation to fall into despair. Just as Lawrence doesn't shy away from the ugliness of systematic executions, neither does he gloss over the equally repulsive realities of the fragility of the human body. Willems confronts his viewers with close-ups of the bloody, shoeless feet of Ray and twisted ankle of Richard. Perhaps even more sickening and audacious for a mainstream genre release, he shows one walker, unsurprisingly not apart of the main cast, pulling his pants down and suffering a humiliating attack of diarrhea, an indulgence that costs him his life. Luckily, Willems exercises the tact to film this explosion briefly and from a distance so as to avoid overwhelming the audience and steering the story into the realm of gross-out exploitation.
Jeremiah Fraites, the co-founder and songwriter of The Lumineers, composes a score for The Long Walk whose mournful strings and piano notes accentuate the tragedy of the fall of the latest comrade, especially that of Hank and Art. Lawrence deploys the music sparingly, reserving it mainly for the murders of characters to whom we've grown the most attached. It doesn't overpower the men's dialogue or sentimentalize the burgeoning brotherhood between them. The actors and the lines they're given to recite are strong enough on their own to get that message across without an artificial intrusion. The stringed theme is intense, riveting, and nerve-racking, portending an air of impending death evocative of a five-chord, faster paced homage to the Sunken Place theme from Get Out.
Spoiler Warning: The following paragraphs divulge the specifics of the ending, including the fates of the remaining protagonists.
The ending, which has been rewritten from that of King's novel, subverts our expectation of who the winner of this year's Long Walk will be. By positioning Ray as our protagonist from the get-go, Mollner and Lawrence condition us to assume that he will be the one to cross the proverbial finish line and return home to his elated mother in triumph. After all, that's essentially how the master of horror himself conceived the ending, albeit with the psychological horror of PTSD to challenge the notion of a happy ending. And because Pete is the loyal, world-weary best friend, surely he will sacrifice himself to spare Ginnie the agony of losing the only person she has left. That's precisely what Mollner hints at, before suddenly flipping the script and turning Ray into the sacrificial lamb. Because he sees the purity in Pete's heart that he doesn't feel in himself, Ray stops walking and allows himself to be shot in the head by The Major on a rainy night. This is a decision at once beautifully selfless and hideously impulsive. For Pete, this allows his newfound best friend and confidante to start a new life, free of poverty and abusive influences; for Ginnie, Ray has now left his mother to spend the rest of her life alone and in mourning.
With his appreciation for life and desire to affect change now superseded by the same impulsive thirst for vengeance that clouded Ray's judgment, Pete wastes his single wish on the carbine of one of the soldiers, which he uses to promptly avenge the death of his brother. This ending represents the downfall of Pete McVries, who relinquishes his long-term hope for a better future in favor of the short-term gratification of revenge, the very toxic desire he had derided days earlier to Ray. Following this rash expression of grief, the outcome for Pete is bleakly ambiguous. He already expended his single wish. Does he now lose the cash prize that would have changed his life for the better? A final word by The Major certainly suggests as much. Will he be arrested for murdering a government official? Is this crime punishable by death? After a horde of brainwashed Americans scatter in fear of being shot next, Pete looks ahead to a now-deserted street, a potent symbol of the journey ahead into the unknown. The blackness of night matches the color of his heart. The sudden lack of people reflects his solitude and loss of hope. The small group of brothers he formed over the course of five days, making them the best of his life, is gone. Where does Pete go from here? Even if he still receives the money, will it matter if he has no one to spend it with? If his next stop is a small cage behind metal bars, were these five days all for nothing? And so paves the way for the real long walk ahead, which, for Pete McVries, is only just beginning.
7.5/10
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