Gary Sinise was well cast as Harry S Truman. I've generally had some mixed feelings about Sinise. I like a lot of his supporting work, but when cast in the lead, I've considered him a bit weak and unconvincing, lacking the "presence" if you will to carry a production. That quality fit Truman, though, who suffered from some of the same perception. He was a solid politician, a product of the Pendergast Democratic machine in Missouri, but one who largely stayed in the background and resisted becoming front and centre as a national figure, partly because of his uncertainties about his own ability. Thrust into the presidency by the death of FDR after he had reluctantly agreed to run for Vice President, he came into office facing a weight more burdensome than any president save Lincoln, at a time when momentous decisions had to be made on a variety of issues, ranging from the atomic bomb to Korea to civil rights, and whether you think he was right or wrong, he made the decisions and never looked back upon them with regret. Consistently looked down upon by his contemporaries, Truman is thought of more highly by historians, and is now widely considered one of the better presidents in US history; one of the best of the 20th century.
Sinise captured the man. His solid but underwhelming (to me at least) screen presence was a perfect representation. I also appreciated Diana Scarwid's performance as Bess Truman, the reluctant and not especially happy wife of a politician who nevertheless understood in the end that Truman had to seek election in his own right in 1948 or he would live the rest of his life thinking of himself as an accident. Those good performances aside, though (and there were other good supporting performances as well) I thought this account of Truman's life was somewhat shallow. I suppose that was inevitable in some ways. How do you do justice to such a life in a couple of hours? Still, this movie left me with little understanding of what you might describe as "the making of a president." There are scenes of Truman's life from his experiences in World War I onward, but they're just scenes. Aside from his problematic relationship with his mother in law (we get the impression that she looked down upon him) and a bit of material about his relationship with Pendergast (Truman was one of the few who would sometimes stand up to him) there's really little sense of the man's development into a a great leader. Instead we get what are essentially snippets: of Truman as a haberdasher, of Truman as a judge, of Truman as a senator, of Truman with FDR, of Truman with MacArthur, etc., etc. Snippets but little substance.
That's not to say that this production is of little value. Even if it does lack depth, it's an interesting portrayal of an interesting man, and if it leads some folk to actually read some material about Truman, especially the more in depth biography by David McCullough on which this is based, then it will have served an important purpose. That earns it some points, but judged on its merits as a TV production, it gets no higher than 6/10 from me.
Sinise captured the man. His solid but underwhelming (to me at least) screen presence was a perfect representation. I also appreciated Diana Scarwid's performance as Bess Truman, the reluctant and not especially happy wife of a politician who nevertheless understood in the end that Truman had to seek election in his own right in 1948 or he would live the rest of his life thinking of himself as an accident. Those good performances aside, though (and there were other good supporting performances as well) I thought this account of Truman's life was somewhat shallow. I suppose that was inevitable in some ways. How do you do justice to such a life in a couple of hours? Still, this movie left me with little understanding of what you might describe as "the making of a president." There are scenes of Truman's life from his experiences in World War I onward, but they're just scenes. Aside from his problematic relationship with his mother in law (we get the impression that she looked down upon him) and a bit of material about his relationship with Pendergast (Truman was one of the few who would sometimes stand up to him) there's really little sense of the man's development into a a great leader. Instead we get what are essentially snippets: of Truman as a haberdasher, of Truman as a judge, of Truman as a senator, of Truman with FDR, of Truman with MacArthur, etc., etc. Snippets but little substance.
That's not to say that this production is of little value. Even if it does lack depth, it's an interesting portrayal of an interesting man, and if it leads some folk to actually read some material about Truman, especially the more in depth biography by David McCullough on which this is based, then it will have served an important purpose. That earns it some points, but judged on its merits as a TV production, it gets no higher than 6/10 from me.