Powerful films fall into two distinct categories. There is the "all sound and fury" variety intent on pummeling the viewer on the head with "significance". Then there is the other type that forgoes the emotional fireworks in favour of a subtler approach - gently almost imperceptively, building to a final emotional crescendo, catching the audience unprepared for its ultimate stirring impact. Into the latter far more effective category falls The Long Walk Home, a human drama set amidst a period of growing racial tensions in Montgomery, Alabama circa 1955.

Sissy Spacek is the socially correct Miriam Thompson, a devoted southern wife and mother whose extent of awareness seldom goes beyond bridge games and junior league meetings. Her long time maid Odessa (Whoopi Goldberg) keeps Miriam's house in order by day and her own house and family in order by night.

Their daily routine is disrupted when the Rev. Martin Luther King calls for a black boycott of the city busline following the arrest of Rosa Parks after she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. As the protest escalates, Miriam, aware of her housekeeper's long walk home, arranges to pick her up twice a week despite the protests of her ambitious husband Norman, who has taken to attending White Citizen's Council meetings at the urging of his bigoted brother. Sides are taken, tensions mount and worlds change..,

Working with an eloquent script by John Cork, director Richard Pearce (who has recently demonstrated his understated touch with Heartland, Country and Threshold) achieves a personal best with The Long Walk Home, always coaxing, never forcing the proceedings. He implements the same honest approach in guiding his two leads in the finest performances of their respective careers.