The new film, Flash Of Genius, by first time director Marc Abraham, is one of those films that is well made, well acted, and well shot; technically, there is little to argue with.
But, it’s still utterly predictable; as predictable as the sports film that features an underdog you just know will win in the end. As with most films that ultimately fail, this film fails for its screenplay. No film can succeed without a good screenplay—one with good dialogue, good characterization, and a good tale. The plot, also, has to come alive, and distinguish itself.
Given that this film was based on reality, this constricts, a bit, the play one can have with the reality. So, this is where perspective comes in. Instead of a biopic that tells the whole tale, there needed to be a set pivot point in the man’s life, from which all else could be parallaxed. At almost two hours in length, this film is 20-40 minutes too long; filled with unneeded passages showing the development of the intermittent windshield wiper, as well as far too much interaction between the lead character, Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear) and his best friend, Gil Previck (Dermot Mulroney). Previck disappears 40% of the way into the film, only for a token reappearance at end when, of course, the little guy perseveres and wins his legal case in the end.
Now, the problem. It just took a few minutes of researching the life of the real Robert Kearns to see that the film took dramatic liberties with the lawsuit aspect of the tale. Kearns didn’t beat the Ford Motor Company in court. He settled, and then beat Chrysler. There are also other elements about the times that events took place in that are not correct. Why this is important is not because art is truth, or nonsense like that, but because it removes the excuses for screenwriter Philip Railsback that all he had to fall back on was the truth.
Rather than the predictable cornpone of post-Capran courtroom melodrama, a realistic depiction of Kearns’ marriage to his wife, Phyllis (Lauren Graham), would (or could) have been the pivot point needed to parallax this film into a higher plane. In watching the film with me, my wife also noticed a missing element in the film, notably its lack of something higher, and suggested that a filmmaker like a Krzysztof Kieslowski would have been able to do far more with this material. Granted, given Hollywood’s horrid recent tend in not even making many intelligent, mature films, those aimed at the post-30 crowd are likely to be inclined to see only the good in this film, and not the bad.
The good is the acting of Kinnear, who is truly the modern equivalent to Jimmy Stewart—an everyman, far much more so than Tom Hanks has ever been. Kinnear can do drama like Hanks never can. Graham is also very good, and the fact that she does not reconcile with Kearns after his victory is one of the lone bright spots in the screenplay, based on truth or not.
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