I was going to save this movie for Independence Day, but it felt right for today. It is, if nothing else, a reminder that the origins of the United States were not smooth and gentle. Yes, all right, it’s ridiculously jingoistic in its outlook; I’ve read the book, and there’s a character who explicitly survives to the end of the movie who dies in the book as a symbol of the sacrifices on the road to liberty. Maybe the movie only gives lip service to that idea, but it at least gives lip service to it?

Johnny Tremain (Hal Stalmaster) is an apprentice silversmith. He works for Ephraim Lapham (Will Wright), and he has your standard Bantering Relationship with Lapham’s granddaughter, Priscilla (Luana Patten). One day, their landlord, Jonathan Lyte (Sebastian Cabot), comes to them with a job. Johnny is confident that they can do it, though Lapham is less sure. Johnny also confides to Priscilla that his mother told him on her deathbed that Lyte was his uncle but not to go to him unless there was nothing else for him.

In order to finish the piece by Lyte’s Monday morning deadline, Johnny conspires with Priscilla and her mother (Virginia Christine) to break the Sabbath. While hiding the evidence from a passing constable, they spill silver on the bench, and Johnny puts his hand in it. His right hand. He cannot work anymore. He tries everything to get a job, but no one will hire a half-crippled boy in Boston when the town is swarming with fully able boys looking for work. He ends up assisting his friend, Rab Silsbee (Dick Beymer, as he is credited!), and the Sons of Liberty.

From there, we get into your standard “following the course of history” plot. We see the oppression inherent in the system, and we see Johnny and his friends fight for liberty. The various Founding Fathers of Boston are represented—we actually first see Paul Revere (Walter Sande) as a silversmith, a job he really was quite good at. There’s only one Adams, and it’s Samuel (Rusty Lane), but we get Josiah Quincy (Whit Bissell), who really deserves to be better remembered. Here, he saves Johnny’s life from a false accusation of theft. This in the days where theft would get you the death penalty.

Which, I suppose, is one of two things that prevents the movie from being a full-on glamorization of the time. Johnny is only saved from death, actual death, because he happens to luck into a skilled lawyer through his friendship with Rab. Given how much control Lyte seems to have in getting anyone he wants to put on trial with scant evidence, it’s not implausible to believe that people had previously died for inconveniencing someone in authority. Further, there is that whole “breaking the Sabbath can get you put on trial” thing. No one seems to suggest that it’s even a bad idea for that to be a law. It’s one thing if Lapham believes in keeping the Sabbath for his own reasons, but Johnny’s hand gets wounded because they fear a constable.

This is, I grant you, from the era where Christianity was separating us from the Godless Commies. I don’t know if that’s a deliberate factor in what is presented here, but the Sabbath thing bothered me even when I was a kid. I really like the idea of a day of rest, but I don’t like the idea that the government gets to tell you that you have to take that specific day for that specific reason. Especially since Lyte would probably have little or no problem with turning the Laphams out onto the street for not getting the work done.

Lyte is a bit of a comic book villain, but not all the Tories are shown that way. General Gage (Ralph Clanton) doesn’t particularly want to oppress the colonists; he’s just doing his job. Lapham is an old man who is probably in that third of Americans who just kind of don’t care one way or another about who runs the colonies. The problem seems mostly to be that the system allows for a Lyte without providing protection for Johnny and the Laphams. Liberty doesn’t mean much if you can be thrown in prison at a rich man’s convenience.

A word here about James Otis (Jeff York). The film perpetuates the belief that it was a blow to the head from a British tax collector’s cudgel that made his behaviour erratic, but he is recorded as having shown symptoms from before then. He might have been mentally ill, though of course there is no way of knowing for sure. I am quite pleased that he is in this movie, though, because he’s also on the list of Founding Fathers Not Enough People Know About. For one thing, Otis is credited with the saying “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” Which is kind of an underlying premise of the Revolution, really.

The other is that, practically alone among the Founding Fathers, Otis was a supporter of equal rights for white and black people. “The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as are all men, white or black.” Still not women, but it’s a start. Also, he died in 1783, when he was struck by lightning. That’s just pretty cool.

Otis gets a powerful speech about the value of liberty. He is, by this time, marginalized in the movement because of his illness, but he is still a powerful figure. The Sons of Liberty are bigger than any one man, but the Sons of Liberty are what they are in part because of Otis. He has earned the right to be there. Perhaps the best thing about the film is that it gives us room for him.

For we must fight this war, in meeting house and Congress and the halls of Parliament, as well as on the field! But what it’s all about, you’ll really never know. And yet it—it—it’s so much simpler than any of you think. We give all we have. We fight! We die, for a simple thing. Only that a man could stand.

The Revolution was firebrands like Otis and Adams, lawyers like Quincy, and simple apprentice boys like Johnny Tremain. All it took was people willing to stand up for their beliefs.