MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Walk’ a Long Dose of Good Intentions

Good intentions do not a good movie make. “The Long Walk Home,” a drama about the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., is the latest in a long line of such examples.

There is no mistaking the film’s heartfelt endorsement of the blacks and whites who confronted racism and sparked the civil rights movement. But these sympathies aren’t dramatized in an exciting or a disturbing way. Despite its incendiary source material, the movie (selected theaters, Friday) has a complacent edge. It seems to exist to confirm our own warm feelings about what wonderful, free-thinking, non-racist liberals we all are.

The dramatic idea in “The Long Walk Home,” which was directed by Richard Pearce from a script by John Cork, probably looked good on paper. Miriam Thompson (Sissy Spacek) is a superannuated Southern belle whose brood is taken care of by her quietly suffering housekeeper Odessa (Whoopi Goldberg). We’re supposed to recognize that, in a sense, both women are servants. Like Odessa, Miriam is indentured to the rules of her society. When the day comes that local blacks refuse to ride the buses until they are allowed sit up front with the whites, Odessa is compelled to trek nine miles each day to work. In order to keep her home in order, Miriam resorts to subterfuge: against the wishes of her decent cracker husband (Dwight Schultz), she picks Odessa up twice a week in the family car.

Miriam’s undercover operation is supposed to mask her true sympathies; her taxi service allows her to recognize her common humanity with Odessa. It’s a weird variant on “Driving Miss Daisy”--the whites do the chauffeuring this time. And, like that film, “The Long Walk Home” (rated PG) tries to frame its civil rights “message” in small-scale, ordinary-people terms.

But the ordinary-people scenario is camouflage. Miriam’s dawning conscience carries a hefty load of symbolism. She is less a real person than a stand-in for white liberalization. Her upward progress is so predictable it could be graphed. It also smudges a real, unremarked aspect of this story: that the success of the bus boycott was in part due to the white women’s inability, or disinterest, in keeping house.

Odessa’s dawning righteousness could be graphed, too. Even though the filmmakers provide her with a family, and friends to talk to, she still comes across as an embattled, saintly loner--a symbol of noble sufferance.

Actors tend to be at their worst when they’re playing uplifting role models, so it’s surprising that, for a while at least, Sissy Spacek demonstrates some spunk. Then the righteousness sets in. Whoopi Goldberg is unusually subdued; there are no edges to her acting here, no sense of the fury that must be raging inside Odessa. Instead, Goldberg affects an angelic world-weariness that turns Odessa into a blob of dignity. “The Long Walk Home” is a blob of good intentions.

‘The Long Walk Home’

Sissy Spacek: Miriam Thompson

Whoopi Goldberg: Odessa Cotter

Dwight Schultz: Norman Thompson

Dylan Baker: Tunker Thompson

A New Visions Pictures presentation of a Miramax Films release. Director Richard Pearce. Producers Howard W. Koch, Jr. and Dave Bell. Executive producers Taylor Hackford and Stuart Benjamin. Screenplay by John Cork. Cinematographer Roger Deakins. Editor Bill Yahraus. Costumes Shay Cunliffe. Music George Fenton. Production design Blake Russell. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.