Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
10/8/08
I often worry that in our
society's eternal struggle between ethics and expediency, expedience has
dug a deep hole, dumped ethics in and buried it under a mountain of cash.
It's easy to see why: we've witnessed the last few weeks just how
much Wall Street holds our economic well-being by the throat. All
Wall Street wants is to make money by any means necessary, so why wouldn't
we all just fall in line and say “Just shut up, take what you can get and
keep the economy running?” In fact, someone whose rights were violated
would almost have to be crazy to challenge Corporate America on principal:
the best you could possibly hope for if you've been wronged is to be written
a check to go home, but don't ever expect an admission of guilt or to be
“made whole” in any way you can't pay for with that check. Flash
of Genius tells the story of Bob Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent
windshield wiper, and his long, costly battle with the Ford Motor Company
to prove they'd stolen his invention. Not to get paid for his invention,
mind you, to PROVE it had been stolen. To PROVE he had invented it.
To regain ALL the rights that might come with that invention had it never
fallen into Ford's hands. And yes, Bob Kearns was crazy, but an excellent
performance by Greg Kinnear made me feel for that crazy guy and his need
to do what was right in a world that sees no right or wrong that doesn't
start with a dollar sign.
The time is the mid-sixties.
Bob Kearns (Greg Kinnear) is an odd fellow, obsessive, more than a little
square, and totally focused on a single idea: why can't windshield
wipers, which at the time were either on or off but had no gradations in
between, work at all different speeds, allowing you to see in light or
misting rain without scraping your windshield? He works nights and
weekends on the project, involving his six kids and his wife Phyllis (Lauren
Graham) in the project until he's finally got the Kearns Blinking Eye Windshield
Wiper. His dream is not to sell the invention to an auto manufacturer,
but rather to manufacture it himself at his own plant where every family
member has a job. To this end, he approaches old friend Gil Privick
(Dermot Mulroney), whose company puts up the money for the patents and
helps him to take the invention to Ford. There, a bigwig (Mitch Pileggi)
tells him “You've won the wiper competition” and asks to see the specs
so they can be forwarded to Washington to be approved as a safety feature.
While waiting for that process, Bob goes hog wild, renting manufacturing
space, making deals with suppliers and hiring employees only to learn that
Ford is “going in a different direction”. That direction just happens
to be mechanically identical to the Blinking Eye, but Gil is hesitant to
move against the company he relies upon for all his business. So
Bob decides to go it alone, but down that road lies madness and a decade
in court that will shatter his family. But Bob Kearns is right, and
to him, nothing else matters.
Flash of Genius is
a movie about windshield wipers (confession: I LOVE my intermittent
windshield wipers, and make a science out of adjusting them just right),
so it's going to rise and fall for most people as a character study.
Kinnear is excellent as a man so obsessed that he's not terribly sympathetic
on paper. It's his great gift to make us feel for “bad” people, and
all that's wrong with Bob Kearns is that he's got a tunnel vision that
would let the whole world burn as long as he gets what by all rights he
has coming to him. His wife, his kids, his career, all are lost (some
for good) in the name of his crusade. Drained of all his innate coolness,
carrying about 20 extra pounds that tone down his movie star looks, Kinnear
is every bit the frumpy everyman you'd want on your side in a pinch but
wouldn't be especially interested in carrying on a conversation with.
And he really sells the obsession, especially when it becomes possible
for Bob to simply cash out and collect first $300,000, then a cool million
and finally thirty times as much to just let it go. He just can't
take money in place of his dream, and Kinnear makes us feel for him even
though the dream itself (particularly the part that never gives up on wanting
to be the exclusive manufacturer of his design) is somewhere between naive
and childish.
The other performances are
solid as well. Graham has great chemistry with Kinnear, and their
marriage really pops as the movie opens. She does a wonderful job
of seeing how this is going to end without being able to stop it before
finally losing hope. Alan Alda has a couple of exceptional scenes
as a lawyer whose definition of fighting for Bob is entirely different
than Bob's. Pilleggi makes a splendid corporate heavy and Mulroney
walks the line between friendship and self-interest skillfully. Kudos
to the casting folks who chose the kids. They pass the torch from
one actor to another very convincingly, always recognizably aging rather
than seeming like the Kearns family consists of a random, ever-changing
roster of children.
The movie is leisurely, and
probably didn't need two full hours to tell this story, but it pays off
very nicely when Bob finally gets his day in court, representing himself
in a manner best described as sincerely amateur. It's a can't-miss
formula, with the frumpy inventor (who knows so little about the legal
system that he shifts back and forth between the stand and the podium to
question himself as a witness) against the slick Ford lawyers, and the
movie works it well. Philip Railsback's steady, occasionally witty
screenplay has just a couple flaws. The movie never grounds itself
in a particular timeline, starting in some random year when people had
funny haircuts and then steadily moving forward “Two Months Later”, “Four
Years Later”, etc. It also falls into the trap of needing to “hit
the ground running” by opening with a randomly selected scene from around
the middle of the narrative that does little other than jar us out of the
story's natural build.
Otherwise, this is a solid,
well crafted movie (Aaron Zigman's score is a particular asset) that tells
an interesting story in the most flattering possible manner. For
a perspective on the battle between Kearns and Ford that fleshes out the
legal theory of the case, Ford's point of view and the less charming aspects
of Bob's obsession, check out John Seabrook's New
Yorker Article upon which the film is based. Sometimes you just
want to punch the world, but all you can really do is sue. Nobody
would hope to end up where following his principals took Bob Kearns.
But sometimes it's nice to know that there's someone out there who isn't
willing to take $$$ for an answer. |
