Film reviews: The Long Walk, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, and The Baltimorons

The Long Walk

Directed by Francis Lawrence (R)

★★★

Though the latest adaptation of a Stephen King novel could be described as Lord of the Flies on foot, said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com, “it’s really more like The Hunger Games for dudes,” in a good way. The established film franchise and this movie even have the same director, here dramatizing King’s decades-old story about a brutal contest in which dozens of young men seeking a cash prize agree to walk until all but one have been shot dead by military overseers for failing to keep the designated pace.

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As in a war movie, the brutal violence of this film “allows it to get sentimental,” with Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson playing contestants who form a believably complex biracial friendship that’s used to ratchet up the pathos. “The violence doesn’t take long to become numbing, but that’s the point,” said Tom Jorgensen in IGN. King wanted his readers to be horrified that state-sanctioned killing of young men could begin to feel routine, and while the repetitiveness of the action does grow tiresome, the story’s simple conceit “proves a very elastic premise onto which many types of societal adversity can be projected.”

Even when the pacing falters, The Long Walk remains “pretty impossible to turn away from,” said Liz Shannon Miller in Consequence. And while it’s never explained what kind of society stages such a competition, the contest’s very existence is “all we need to understand about the world that allows it to happen.”

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

Directed by Simon Curtis (PG)

★★★

The new Downton Abbey movie is less a peak for the franchise than “a reverential goodbye,” said Tim Robey in The Telegraph (U.K.). Fifteen years after the debut of the British TV series, which spawned two previous feature-length movies, creator-writer Julian Fellowes must bid adieu to more than two dozen characters, both aristocrats and servants, and it’s “no easy task.” Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary “gets easily the strongest arc.” As a recent divorcée, she battles ostracization at just the moment, a year into the Great Depression, that her father, played by Hugh Bonneville, prepares to hand over to her control of Downton Abbey, the Crawley family estate.

Because the movie also packs in the impending retirement of the Crawleys’ cherished butler, class warfare on the board of a county fair, and several other sideshows, “there are times when you long for the comparatively relaxed pace of the series episodes,” said Frank Scheck in The Hollywood Reporter. But while even fans would “practically need a scorecard” to keep track of every character, Fellowes’ witty script “proves a pleasure throughout” and “works hard to provide closure.”

Playing an American relative of the Crawleys and an adviser who flirts with Mary, “Paul Giamatti and Alessandro Nivola are a kick of adrenaline, capturing the fond bemusement of Americans gallivanting through the Old World,” said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent (U.K.). And amid all the plot juggling, Fellowes “finds some surprising moments of self-reflection for the franchise,” making this Grand Finale “about as graceful and fitting an endnote as you could hope for.”

The Baltimorons

Directed by Jay Duplass (R)

★★★

Despite a title that sounds like an insult, Jay Duplass’ new movie could well be “the year’s most charming romantic comedy,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. On the day before Christmas, a failed Baltimore comedian played by co-writer Michael Strassner chips a tooth, tracks down a workaholic dentist willing to help, and winds up passing the holiday with her after overhearing that her plans for the evening have blown up. Liz Larsen is terrific as Didi, Strassner’s older co-lead, and as the pair’s unlikely May-December courtship plays out, Duplass’ first movie in 13 years becomes “a sweet story about seizing opportunities for joy no matter how ridiculous they seem.”

To my eyes, the film “miscalculates its charm from the first scene,” said Ben Kenigsberg in The New York Times. Strassner’s Cliff is less amusing than he thinks he is, and it “strains credulity” that either character would put up with the other so long, let alone wind up crashing a party celebrating the impromptu remarriage of Didi’s ex.

But “Christmas movies aren’t typically subtle,” said Matthew Jackson in The A.V. Club, and this one knows just how to use the end-of-year holiday as the prod its stuck characters need. “With two great performances and a pervading sense of warmth,” The Baltimorons emerges as “one of the year’s best comedies, and in its own way, a new Christmas classic.”