Review of Flash of Genius (2008) by Matthew B — 21 Aug 2009

Ford: Supporting the Nazis and stealing ideas since the early 1900's o.O.

A lot of huge jumps in time you'll have to get used to if you want to watch this movie, as it takes place over the course of years, and it's not like everything can be shown even within 2 hours - so be prepared. I really hate giant jumps in time in a movie - because I like to see what happens inbetween and such - but it is a necessity here, and I don't mind it so much.

The movie tells the story of Robert Kearns, who invented the intermittent windshield wiper (his original name for it was apparently the "Kearns blinking eye windshield wiper", or something to that effect), tried to sell it to Ford, Ford saying they were interested & asking for a prototype so that they could approve it, and then backing out 3 months later - seemingly after they've backwards engineered it & took all the information they could from it so that they could manufacture it themselves. That alone would make people hate this world, but oh no! Wait until you hear how it tears Robert Kearns' family apart, as he continues onward to make Ford acknowledge what they've done & show that Robert Kearns had been the one who had in fact invented the intermittent windshield wiper and that they had wronged him. As I mentioned before, this film & fight takes course over years.

12 years.

The movie was a little long; almost 2 hours running time (if you don't count credits), it tends to make anyone watching a little restless when there's not much going on for a lot of the scenes in the film.

Greg Kinnear did a good job showing a emotionly wrecked man, who had all-but lost his family & life to Ford over their theft of his invention. He seemed out of place in the courtroom, which was ofcourse a good thing, as a man who is not a lawyer representing himself having to do the duties of a lawyer would be out of place. If there was one thing I had to gripe about, it was he seemed to be more arrogant than I had expected him to be.

Okay movie, might be better watched over the course of 2 one-hour viewings, rather than all at once - unless you take a decent break in the middle, then it'd probably be okay - due to it being potentially off-putting for its lack of things going on.