The Man is a compelling and sometimes explosive adaptation of the Irving Wallace bestseller. James Earl Jones portrays the black man who ascends so unexpectedly and without precedent to the presidency of the United States.
He gains his top position through the rules of succession. As president pro tem of the Senate, he automatically is elevated when the president and speaker of the House are killed in the collapse of a building in Germany, and the vice-president, incapacitated by a stroke, announces he cannot take over the office of president. Jones delivers an honest, forceful characterization of the president who accepts his fate with humility but discovers his own strength as a man through learning his own powers to cope.