Review of Revenge of the Electric Car (2011) by Jen G — 30 Mar 2013

While not having the blood, gore or mayhem one usually associates with a movie with 'revenge' in the title, "Revenge of the Electric Car" is still an astute, if flashy, documentary about the reemergence of the electric car after being unceremoniously trashed only a few years previously. The new developers include Nissan/Renault, GM and upstart Tesla, led by Elon Musk who is not the inspiration for Tony Stark unless he somehow funds a working time machine in the future which I am not exactly ruling out at this stage.

The bad news is the documentary does not know what to do with the unprecedented access it has been given to people in power, spending a lot of time on already thoroughly covered territory concerning the recent recession and almost complete failure of the American auto industry. In fact, the documentary would have fared much better if it had focused exclusively on Elon Musk, not in a scrappy underdog kind of way, but because he has more in common with a riverboat gambler with past successes that include Pay Pal and SpaceX and huge struggles in getting his Tesla off the ground which I had been curious about ever since seeing one on an early episode of "Leverage" in 2008.