Nothing about Francis Lawrence’s take-no-prisoners adaptation of Richard Bachman’s (aka Stephen King) staggering novel offers one shard of hope for any of us to wrap our bloodied fingers around. Nor should it, given the hellish America landscape it envisions, an undefined time where a rotting-to-its-core nation goads 50 male teens into a grueling contest that demands participants walk at a 3-mile-an-our pace or get a bullet through the head delivered by The Major (Mark Hamill) or his military goons. The victor reaps hard-to-come-by rewards in an unwelcoming, militarized land.

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Needless to say, “The Long Walk” is a brutal and visceral nightmare that rattles and shocks with in-your-face violence and gruesome images that test audiences’ limits. Some will flee from theaters.

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