Review of The Long Walk Home

Blacks in the South during the 1950s start a strife-riddled boycott against the transit system after Rosa Parks is disciplined for not giving up her seat to a white person on the bus. Subject matter is well worth exploring, but director Richard Pearce approaches this story too dutifully, as if he were teaching a course in towing the line. The white folk are all nasty bigots, except maid Whoopi Goldberg's proprietress--a saintly Sissy Spacek--who takes up the black community's cause. It's Convenient Script-Writing 101, and without much of an edge it never has a chance to accumulate any heart--or any vitality. ** from ****