It's like an entertaining history lesson. Here's Harry S. Truman (Sinise), a plain farmer and haberdasher from the middle of some Midwestern nowhere, who gets promoted into the Senate by a local political strong man, then becomes a nonentity as Vice President, and finally President-by-Accident for two terms, retiring in 1953.
We get to watch him politely court his wife, put up with insults from his cantankerous mother-in-law (Smith), command a battery of guns in World War I, decide to drop the bomb on Japan, duel with General MacArthur over Korea, ignore Tailgunner Joe McCarthy's rants in the Senate, and finally go home to Independence, where he more or less stayed until his death.
Sinise is pretty good. His natural voice doesn't really resemble Truman's very much but he approximates the Missouri accent. Diana Scarwid, as wife Bess, can be a fine actress given the right role. She was hilarious as the compulsive hair dresser in "Silkwood". But she's constrained by the role here, and she's not much more than the stereotypical strong supporting wife, who merely more or less submits to life in the arena while longing for the plowed fields of yesteryear.
As Truman, Sinise too is stuck with an unimaginative and schematic script. Truman was something more than the plain-spoken man from the very un-chic Midwest. Plain spoken, yes, but much of that speech was more colorful than what we hear on screen. I'm sure David McCollough's book was more detailed than this sketch is. Maybe the screenwriter and producers wanted an uplifting story of an honest patriot. But how could they leave out Truman's incandescent rant about the turnaround in Korea -- when the Chinese became "the yellow peril," and "the Chinks," and "the heathen Chinee"? Ed Flanders brought more energy and flamboyance to the role of Truman in the equally bland story of "MacArthur." I'm sorry that nobody got to play Thomas E. Dewey, New York's racket-busting DA. Dewey had an innocent but comical appearance. Someone said he looked like the little man in the tuxedo on top of a wedding cake.
It's also too bad that we don't learn more about the internal dynamics of the Truman administration. We don't even learn who his Vice President was, or his Secretary of State. The latter was James F. Byrnes, a lawyer from South Carolina who was a segregationist, who lacked diplomatic skills, and who provided Truman with advice on foreign affairs. Byrnes was an important figure but if his name is mentioned I missed it. The Marshall Plan gets about ten seconds.
Yet, I'm glad that HBO brought this out, whatever weaknesses it may have. Okay, Harry Truman is cleaned up a little for public consumption but today's kids don't even know who Truman WAS, let alone anything about his personality or his appearance.
We get to watch him politely court his wife, put up with insults from his cantankerous mother-in-law (Smith), command a battery of guns in World War I, decide to drop the bomb on Japan, duel with General MacArthur over Korea, ignore Tailgunner Joe McCarthy's rants in the Senate, and finally go home to Independence, where he more or less stayed until his death.
Sinise is pretty good. His natural voice doesn't really resemble Truman's very much but he approximates the Missouri accent. Diana Scarwid, as wife Bess, can be a fine actress given the right role. She was hilarious as the compulsive hair dresser in "Silkwood". But she's constrained by the role here, and she's not much more than the stereotypical strong supporting wife, who merely more or less submits to life in the arena while longing for the plowed fields of yesteryear.
As Truman, Sinise too is stuck with an unimaginative and schematic script. Truman was something more than the plain-spoken man from the very un-chic Midwest. Plain spoken, yes, but much of that speech was more colorful than what we hear on screen. I'm sure David McCollough's book was more detailed than this sketch is. Maybe the screenwriter and producers wanted an uplifting story of an honest patriot. But how could they leave out Truman's incandescent rant about the turnaround in Korea -- when the Chinese became "the yellow peril," and "the Chinks," and "the heathen Chinee"? Ed Flanders brought more energy and flamboyance to the role of Truman in the equally bland story of "MacArthur." I'm sorry that nobody got to play Thomas E. Dewey, New York's racket-busting DA. Dewey had an innocent but comical appearance. Someone said he looked like the little man in the tuxedo on top of a wedding cake.
It's also too bad that we don't learn more about the internal dynamics of the Truman administration. We don't even learn who his Vice President was, or his Secretary of State. The latter was James F. Byrnes, a lawyer from South Carolina who was a segregationist, who lacked diplomatic skills, and who provided Truman with advice on foreign affairs. Byrnes was an important figure but if his name is mentioned I missed it. The Marshall Plan gets about ten seconds.
Yet, I'm glad that HBO brought this out, whatever weaknesses it may have. Okay, Harry Truman is cleaned up a little for public consumption but today's kids don't even know who Truman WAS, let alone anything about his personality or his appearance.