Fifty young men must walk without a break until only one is left standing, who wins a huge cash prize and their 'one wish'. Fail to keep up the pace or break one of the many rules and you get your "ticket" from the barrel of a gun.
Ray (Cooper Hoffman), Pete (David Jonsson), Art (Tut Nyuot) and Hank (Ben Wang) become fast friends at the start of the gruelling ordeal calling themselves "The Musketeers".
No good will come of this.
CW: 80s style homophobic and misogynistic language, bloody executions that the camera lingers on
Francis Lawrence and JT Mollner's adaptation of a Stephen King short focuses on camaraderie in the face of horror, bickering rivalry and some mild philosophising but struggles to really flesh out what I assume was quite sparse source material.
The walk is harrowing but there's only so long you can watch people struggling with exhaustion interspersed with somebody getting shot while sprawled on the tarmac.
Naturally they talk about their aspirations and their pasts but we only really get Ray's story in any detail. While it would have been formulaic for there to be a short section for each of them I think it would have helped show more of the world and why on earth anyone would volunteer for this.
Mildly disappointing 6/10.