I’m a sucker for manipulative,
feel-good melodramas so long as they are impeccably crafted. In
a way, it’s harder for a filmmaking team to pull off a
traditional film than it is an avant-garde project because the
familiarities of the former are so distinctly recognizable. This
fact makes the rare instance in which one succeeds all the more
pleasantly surprising. Last year, such was the case with the
transfixing tearjerker August Rush. This year, Flash
of Genius is that special film.
That Flash of Genius got made
is a triumph in and of itself. As much as I hope the movie does
well at the box-office, I realize that it will likely tank given
its near-paradoxical marketing campaign. At once, the film tells
a standard David vs. Goliath tale about a man overcoming a giant
corporation and portrays a rather eccentric subject in that
David is the man who invented—you guessed it!—the intermittent
windshield wiper. Essentially, Flash of Genius won’t sell
to the older female tearjerker set because its protagonist is
too out-there, nor will it sell to the art-film crowd who might
enjoy said protagonist because they’ll complain about its
predictability.
Despite the challenge that Flash
of Genius presents distributor Universal on a commercial
level, the film is an artistic knockout. It finds surprising
power in the aforementioned combination of a portrayal of a
unique man and a (moving) adherence to a genre-standard.
A lot of the picture’s power rests in
the Oscar-quality lead-performance of Greg Kinnear as Bob
Kearns, the inventor who changed every driver’s life without
them ever knowing who he was. Kinnear portrays each aspect of
Bob’s personality just right. In the opening scenes when Bob
discovers his intermittent windshield-wiper invention by
contemplating the nature of the blinking human eye, the veteran
actor perfectly balances his character’s introverted sense of
genius and the mind-boggling triumph of his discovery. When Bob
successfully invents an intermittent wiper prototype only to be
ripped off by the jealous Ford Motor Corporation, his
frustration is sympathetic and gut-wrenching because director
Marc Abraham allows Kinnear to relate this to the resulting
breakdown of Bob’s marriage. Male viewers in particular will
empathize with the actor’s portrayal of the way that Bob feels
the need to be recognized for his stolen invention so much so
that he watches his wife leave him because he becomes
emotionally absent. And, as if all that wasn’t enough, Kinnear
depicts Bob’s courage battling Ford in court for damages due to
violating his patent-rights in a dreamily uplifting and
unexpectedly humorous manner. Kinnear delivers a stand-out
performance in a movie filled with great acting.
Flash of Genius admittedly
doesn’t leave the reviewer a lot to analyze (although I could go
on for pages about how skillfully done each element of the film
is). There isn’t much socio-political commentary on corporate
legal battles to discuss here. Instead, the movie succeeds
purely through the density of its emotions. Bob’s intellectual
pursuits, home-life, and self-image all prove fascinating angles
of the story to observe and to feel. The film moves
briskly for a full two hours and offers an experience that will
be poignant and entertaining for all viewers who can leave their
overriding cynicism at the door. Flash of Genius may
indeed be derivative in that it doesn’t seek to achieve anything
bold or completely new, but it does tell a compelling story
well. And if good storytelling doesn’t have a place in
Hollywood, then I don’t know what does.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 10.2.2008
Screened on: 9.24.2008 at the AMC
Century City 15 in Century City, CA.
