The Long Walk

In an alternate, militarized United States, a totalitarian regime holds an annual spectacle called The Long Walk. Fifty boys — one from each state, technically volunteers, though social and economic pressure makes refusal nearly impossible — must walk hundreds of miles along rural highways under constant military escort. The rule is simple: maintain at least three miles per hour, or receive a warning. Three warnings means a soldier shoots you on the spot. The Walk ends when one boy remains. The winner receives a cash prize and any wish the regime can grant. The event is nationally televised, presented as patriotic ritual and entertainment, normalizing lethal cruelty as spectacle.

Raymond "Ray" Garraty is the Maine Walker — ordinary, thoughtful, our way in. He enters partly out of economic desperation and partly because this society has made the Walk the only recognized path to heroism for boys like him. Around him forms a loose core group: Peter McVries, cynical and sharp; Baker, quietly principled; Hank Olson; Stebbins, composed and oddly distant. At the starting line they still joke and posture. The Major — a smirking military figurehead played by Mark Hamill — fires the starting gun: "Walk until only one of you remains."

The early miles strip away bravado fast. The first executions shock Ray and the others — soldiers calmly shooting teenagers in front of cheering roadside crowds. As hundreds of miles accumulate, the film moves through marked milestones, each one measuring not just distance but the deterioration of bodies and minds. Ray, McVries, Baker, and the others develop a trench-warfare camaraderie: sharing jokes and stories to stay sane, talking about what they'd wish for if they won, sometimes physically supporting one another at the risk of earning warnings themselves. McVries challenges Ray constantly, pushing him to think beyond revenge and toward something more humane.

Deaths come steadily. Hank Olson, near mile 201, walks calmly toward the soldiers when he knows he's finished. Baker tries to run to him and nearly earns his own execution before Ray drags him back. Pearson's body simply gives out — no rage, no plea, just collapse and a gunshot. At mile 324, Baker's nosebleed worsens and he knows it's over. He hands Ray his locket for his grandmother, asks his friends not to look back, and breaks away. They hear the shots. They keep walking.