Flash of Genius

You just got to hand it to Greg Kinnear. He has certainly put all of himself in every role he has undertaken. From the host of E Entertainment's 'Talk Soup', onto such film roles as 'Little Miss Sunshine','Auto Focus' & this fine film. Kinnear plays a downtrodden Joe Sixpack from the suburbs, with his wife & six children. Here he is an engineering professor who has re-invented the windshield wiper (or did he just upgrade it?), only to have his idea stolen by Ford Motors. After 12 years of struggle that includes a nervous breakdown & the melt down of his marriage, he finally has his day in court. Does he emerge the victorious? I won't kiss & tell. This is a quiet,understated little film that deserved far better than it got. Alan Alda also shines as his attorney that tries to go to bat for him. This is one of those films that (hopefully)will have a second chance when it gets released on DVD. Slapped a PG-13 by the MPAA for some salty language,a moment of sensuality & some rather erratic behavior,due to a nervous breakdown.

Time after time, Anerican audiences have stood witness to the fact Inventors have created and continue to create some of the most important breakthroughs in history. As a result, America has become the Land of Opportunity for any young inventor to make his mark in history. However, there are those in high position who believe they are so powerful, they can reach out and steal anything they want with total impunity. This movie is a case in point. The worthy film is called a " Flash of Genius. " It is essentially the story of Bob Kearns (Greg Kinnear) a college professor who in a moment of inspiration, invents a wind shield wiper with an oscillating program. A top executive of the Ford Motor company ( Mitch Pileggi) tries to plays the professor for a fool and disregarding the little man, steals his patents. Though it will take money, time, effort and patience to fight the industrial giant, Kearns risks all to fight for what he believes is the right thing to do. Alan Alda plays a wimp of a lawyer and tries to convince Kearns to take a tiny settlement and give up the fight. Despite the risk of losing his wife, his family and even his sanity, Kearns is determined and creates a wonderful David vs Goliath story. Highly recommended to anyone who believe in fighting with the best weapon of all; the truth. ****

I cherish this movie; a lot of this is for personal reasons. The film is well done; Greg Kinnear really impressed me with this and little miss sunshine.

I am a sales guy who sells to big companies. I recently gave ford a free education in a service we offer, and it took so much evangalizing, repetition, re-explanation and hitting them over the head. I was astonished that a business this big didn't have smarter people.

Then, when we gave them our price and offer, they said "no thanks were going to build this in house rather than use you".........I felt a visceral connections to Bob Kearns.

Suddenly, Ford is an expert on this. I would talk to anyone who would listen, and I put my blood into helping them improve their business. I have a new opinion of the buying and technology that Ford uses to run its operations. One of the reasons they might be the "least screwed up" of the auto makers" is their soul-less way of getting companies on their knees, and then kicking them down when you cry "uncle" for them.

Sorry for blabbing. It just hurts to know we really wanted to help them , and help us make a buck in the process. And we were treated like dogs.

It was great to see Greg Kinnear in another flawless performance; here as Dr. Bob Kearns, inventor and professor. To me, I think of Mr. Kinnear as sort of the cocker spaniel of American actors. Perfectly companionable for just about everyone. He just feels right in so many roles it's hard to imagine anyone else having done them. This is another instance of his having added immeasurably to what may have otherwise been a more uninteresting character. After all, it's hard to imagine anyone making an engineer or professor seem interesting; but in this outing Kinnear certainly accomplishes that.

Adding her own note of quiet grace and perfect screen presence, Lauren Graham as Phyllis Kearns gives her character both charm and great heart, not to mention that she looks better in a plain white nightgown that just about anyone I've seen... well, except for my wife, of course.

There are other great performances here too, like Mitch Pileggi as the bad guy from any corporation in America, Tim Kelleher as his greasier side-kick and Dermot Mulroney as a slightly smarmy friend of Kearnes'. Likewise the hoard of young actors playing the Kearns children added a perfect familial note to the vehicle.

But, more than any of these fine people, the focal point here was the story as it always is in these social consciousness melodramas. Yes, Virginia. The wheels of American industry is greased with the bones of the cheated and betrayed genius of America. That is so universally true it's a well known sub-plot to all of America's engineers and manufacturers. What is also well known is what happens when they try to find justice, let alone an iota of truth; which is so accurately and skillfully portrayed in this film.

Speaking as an engineer who has worked in American industry for over 40 years, I can say that I have seen this more times than I can count. It goes on every day right here under your noses, America, and no one ever does a thing to change the way America fails to protect her fragile genius. That is deliberately so. That is so because the laws America uses to define how these things are handled are made by lawyers, for lawyers. It would cease to be profitable if the laws were crafted to actually protect it's most precious resource - it's creative people. But it's not; the laws are instead crafted to provide fat and frequent paychecks to every leach that slithers through the "halls of justice".

Just as Kearns did, I had to learn the hard way that justice in America belongs only to those with a fat enough wallet to buy it through the local outlet. If you don't have the six figures to hire a lawyer then you have no rights and no freedom in this country. Like a Wildebeest grazing blissfully in the middle of the herd, you have only not been awakened to that fact yet because no one has yet decided to attack you, or steal from you.

This has been the long way around to tell you that the creators of the film got it exactly right, with one serious flaw... for every Bob Kearns who has eviscerated themselves to win a Pyrrhic victory of the sort we witness here, there have been thousands who have given up for being too shallow in pocket or too short of mental fortitude or too short of the desire for self-flagellation required to press through to an empty, moral victory.

And even here, we see unmistakably that this "victory" costs Kearns what he valued most in his life. He didn't even live to see himself depicted as "heroic" in this fine film.

Still, thank you Bob, wherever you are.

OK, so, on paper you must confess that any film that dramatises anything involving windscreen-wipers runs the risk of being pretty darn dull. But then at the same time maybe it is one of those films that sounds dull but is actually thrilling by way of drawing the viewer into the subject. When you thing about it, ignoring the part of the car that it involves, this story of the little man put down by a heartless corporation is pretty well timed with the strength of feeling towards our economic ruling class nowadays. So maybe Flash of Genius could ride that wave and deliver an impacting and uplifting story of overcoming at the same time – full of tension and emotion. Well, yes, I guess it "could" but the question is "does it?"

Unfortunately the answer to that is "no" and at best the film could be described as "solid". Contrary to my preconception the film is not dull because of the subject or because it gives lots of detail on engineering but rather because it seems to drag everything out and offer the viewer very little reason to care. It doesn't appear to focus on forward motion because if there is an opportunity to go over old ground or get into a rut then you best believe that it takes it. It is not a grind though, don't get me wrong, it is not a bad film, but just one that seems happy to do very little other than the basics. The courtroom scenes are where it should have come to life but even these fail to thrill or engage – OK they are there and they are "fine" for what they are but how am I the viewer supposed to be excited by what I am watching if the film itself seems all very underwhelmed by it.

I won't say that the cast are the problem but they are certainly part of it. Kinnear tries to deliver the character with real emotion in a way that will draw sympathy from the audience but his drab performance and repetitive delivery is part of the film being slowed down and not allowed to fizz. Graham doesn't help because she is part of this aspect of his character. In fairness she is quite lively and real but she cannot lift the film when the rest of it seems so intent on being average and sluggish. Alda turns up to offer the viewer hope as he enters the film with his custom delivery and energy, having several good scenes before disappearing again. Pileggi is a good solid "baddie" in the corporate sense and perhaps it would have helped to have allowed him more room to play with his character. Sadly none of the cast really gets to do this other than Kinnear, who has to take his scenes down into "despair" in a way that deadens the film and robs it of pace. Perhaps this is an accurate telling of the story but in this case it comes at a price and that price is the film's effectiveness and entertainment value.

This leaves Flash of Genius as a film that is far too worthy for its own good. It plays like a solid TVM and it certainly offered me nothing to justify why it was in the cinema with me when at best it was a DVD release. It has little in the way of drama or tension to it and it is hard to emotionally buy into the film in the way I needed to be able to in order to stick with it. If "solid" is what you are after then this is an OK film but the only remarkable thing about it is just how unremarkable, sluggish and frankly dull the whole thing is.