March 21, 2009: Flash of Genius
I had heard of this film when it had an incredibly brief theatrical run last fall, and was very interested since it’s about cars and engineers, and I’m an engineer with an interest in cars. It’s the true story of an inventor in the early 1970s (Bob Kearns, played by Greg Kinnear) who solves a problem which has kept Detroit engineers stymied for years – intermittent windshield wipers on cars. In this day and age of computer-controlled everything in cars, where you just program whatever you like and put in switches to control things, it’s hard to comprehend that it was not even 40 years ago that such a mechanism had to be controlled by just the right combination of capacitors, resistors, transistors and other solid-state components, and be resistant to temperature and humidity fluctuations from weather and engine heat, and behave properly the whole time. And that’s just controlling the windshield wipers. It makes you realize why there weren’t very many features on older cars!
Anyway, we have Greg Kinnear playing this earnest inventor, trying to go about the marketing of his solution the right way by working with a partner who is a friend in the automotive supply business, but wanting to manufacture the parts himself because that’s what he’s always wanted to do. The car companies show interest initially but then give him the runaround, and somehow shortly afterwards magically come up with a solution themselves.
The overall arc of dramatic tension comes from the battle with the car companies over compensation for an allegedly stolen idea. However, significant time is devoted to the growing obsession of our keen inventor and how the desire to put things right alienates him from his wife and children over the years, and we really have to wonder whether it’s all worthwhile. Zodiac (2007) covered similar territory as a backdrop to that film’s main story of trying to track down a serial killer. Flash of Genius is able to provide us with some reward in this area, however, as Kearns’ children, years later and towards the end of the court proceedings, end up bonding with their father as they help him with research, and he leaves to them the decision about whether to take a huge settlement offered by Ford, or to take their chances in court to hear an official judgment that they were wronged. He knows by this point that he has caused great pain to those he loves and he can’t take that back, but he can include them in the fight and give them ownership in the outcome, which is all they really wanted in the first place.
Unfortunately, all of this means that the movie follows a fairly predictable pattern, as we know that our hero needs to “win” in some fashion in the end. The writer takes a similar approach to that taken in A Few Good Men, with what appears to be a good settlement available before taking changes on a court judgment, but having the underdog going to trial on principle instead, and coming out a winner in the end but not without some compromise. The movie is passable, with a story which is engrossing in its way but not particularly well done, and undeniably formulaic.
Partially realized potential. Worth a rental.
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