John Adams

STUDIO: HBO
PREMIERE: March 16, 2008
STARRING: Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, David Morse, Sarah Polley, Rufus Sewell, Justin Theroux, Tom Wilkinson, and Danny Huston
WRITTEN BY: Kirk Ellis
DIRECTED BY: Tom Hooper

HBO's John Adams is one of the most ambitious pieces of storytelling in the history of television and one of the most impressive of the last few years. Based on the book by David McCullough that some of us read and even more of us used as a paperweight (800 pages of revolutionary history can be daunting), John Adams isn't content with a typical made-for-TV movie or even a typical mini-series. To be honest, with the cancellation of our favorite HBO shows - Deadwood, The Wire, The Sopranos - and the relative failure of recent shows like John From Cincinnati, Tell Me You Love Me, and Flight of the Conchords, we haven't been able to say this in a while, but "it's not TV...it's HBO."

John Adams is not TV, movies, or even what HBO has been in a long time. It's something mesmerizing and different from what you usually see waiting for you in your DVR or ready to download On Demand. Like a lot of HBO's quality programming, it's an incredibly challenging piece and demands your concentration to appreciate it, but it's also incredibly timely. There are numerous reasons why you should watch John Adams and I'll get to a few later in this review, but the first thing you should know is that this is not your typical history lesson. It's as vital a piece of political filmmaking as any of the recent Iraq war movies. In the incredible first episode, John Adams (Paul Giamatti) asks his cousin Sam Adams (Danny Huston) during the Boston Tea Party, "Do you approve of brutal and illegal acts to enforce a political principle?" That very question is being asked on Capital Hill on nearly a daily basis during the last few years. As much as things may change, as many things stay the same.

The first 70-minute episode of John Adams (the first two of seven 'episodes', totaling 160 minutes, debut Sunday night and the rest run over the next five weeks) focuses on two major events - a trial of a British soldier who is accused of ordering his men to shoot into a crowd of children and the Boston Tea Party and the events that followed it. In other words, the first episode is the prelude to a revolution (brought to life vividly in the second episode when brilliant actors like Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin and David Morse as George Washington join the cast and things get ugly on Bunker Hill). But it's not the way you remember it in most Hollywood retellings. First, Adams is the defending attorney for the British soldier. It turns out that the soldiers were provoked to fire and attacked by an unruly mob before they did. But taking on the cause of the increasingly unpopular Brits was not a safe position for Mr. Adams. Once again, the timeliness of this "Law & Order: 18th Century" couldn't be pronounced. Consider an exchange between John and Sam, in which the more rebellious Adams says "This is a time for choosing sides." John Adams responds the way we hope all leaders, especially a few more of the current and possibly future ones would - "I'm for the law. Is there another side?"

The screenplay for John Adams by Kirk Ellis is remarkably good, but the mini-series wouldn't have its power without three people - Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense). All of them do the kind of work that would win Oscars if John Adams were a theatrical film and it's nearly impossible to believe that Giamatti and Linney won't be making room for Golden Globes and Emmys in the next twelve months. Giamatti never gives in to the urge that a lot of actors would have to overplay the intellectualism or the righteousness of Adams. He makes him relatable in his world-weariness and his love for his wife Abigail. And Linney is quite simply one of the best actresses alive. Her Abigail Adams is pitch-perfect from scene one. It's just another notch in her incredibly impressive resume. The scary thing about Linney is that, with her work in The Savages last year and now this, she actually seems to be getting better. And then there's Fujimoto, who takes on a project that would leave many cinematographers crying in a fetal position and shoots it perfectly. The scope of John Adams is incredible and Fujimoto does the kind of work that should be studied in film classes. It's never too obvious or overstated and fits the tone of the material perfectly. Of course, with an ensemble that includes actors like Wilkinson, Morse, Sarah Polley, Rufus Sewell, Justin Theroux, and Danny Huston, there's not a bad performance in the bunch but it's understandably Giamatti and Linney that shine brightest.

To be fair, we've only seen the first 160 minutes of John Adams - that's all that was sent for review - so it's possible that the entire project falls to piece in the last five-sevenths, but that seems highly unlikely. And even if it does, these first two episodes are stronger than any movie released so far this year and most released last year. People often bemoan the lack of quality filmmaking this time of year. For the next few weeks, all they need to do is turn on HBO. We might make it to the summer after all.