Review: Flash of Genius (2008)

[Steve Rhodes]

FLASH OF GENIUS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  *** 1/2

FLASH OF GENIUS, a wonderfully old-fashioned film, tells a heart-warming 
David and Goliath tale.  It's an amazing and touching true story that will 
have you on the edge of your seat and may even cause you to shed a tear or 
two.  If more movies were like this one, audiences might not feel so cheated 
on their way out.  With a very good first half and an absolutely mesmerizing 
second half, the movie is thoroughly and consistently entertaining.

Starring a never better Greg Kinnear as Dr. Bob Kearns, an Electrical 
Engineering professor and a hard working inventor, the film follows this 
father of six as he defends his patents, which were ruthlessly ignored by 
all of the big car companies.  The story takes some twists and turns you may 
guess and even more that aren't quite so predictable.

When we first meet Dr. Kearns, he is a despondent, disheveled and downright 
delusional guy on a bus who thinks he is going to Washington to see the Vice 
President.  In response to a call from his loyal and loving wife, Phyllis 
(Lauren Graham from "The Gilmore Girls"), state troopers stop the bus in 
order to retrieve poor Dr. Kearns, who lost his mind because of the strain 
he is under.

We then cut to three years earlier, when Dr. Kearns and his family are at 
church.  On the way home in the car, he first gets his idea for his famous 
invention, the "blinking eye."  Haven't heard of it, you say?  Perhaps you 
know it better as the "intermittent wiper," a gadget that sounds a whole lot 
simpler to develop than it was, since the big three car companies could not 
figure out how to make it work.

Dr. Kearns, who was legally blind in one-eye, due to a wedding night 
accident, was acutely aware of the function of the eye and the eyelid.  He 
modeled his design for a non-continuous wiper by making it work in sporadic 
blinks as the eyelid does to clear off the eyeball.

This American inventor and something of a genius put his entire family to 
work helping him.  But his breakthrough in getting it built came from his 
long-time friendship with Gil Privick (Dermot Mulroney).  The company that 
the wealthy Gil worked for had ties to all of the automobile manufacturers. 
In no time, Gil arranged a meeting for Dr. Kearns with Ford and soon a deal 
was cut.  Dr. Kearns was very leery of giving his prototype to Ford, even 
though Ford insisted that the government, for safety reasons, had to be 
given a working model.  As Dr. Kearns was gearing up a factory to build the 
units Ford wanted, Ford suddenly announced that they were no longer 
interested.  Dr. Kearns was crushed, but it was nothing like what he felt 
like over a year later, when he saw the new Mustang, which boasted an 
intermittent wiper, built exactly to Dr. Kearns's design, for which he held 
five patents.

Most of the movie concerns Dr. Kearns long battle against Ford, who 
alternately ignored him, buried him in paperwork or offered him various sums 
of cash to go away.  A man obsessed, not with money but with the pride of 
design, he offered many times to settle with Ford if they would take out a 
one-page ad in the local paper admitting that they stole his design and had 
done everything since then to harass him in order to make him go away.

A man willing to risk it all, Dr. Kearns lost his mind and his family in the 
process of his long legal battle.  It is almost impossible not to feel very 
sorry for him.  As he gets sucked into a never ending black hole, you'll be 
rooting for him the whole time, even if it appears that he may not get what 
he wants and that, if he does, it might have to be given to him 
posthumously.

Gil never gets it.  It's "just a windshield wiper," he tells his 
increasingly obsessed and beginning to be paranoid old friend.  But with 
full clarity of mind and complete conviction, Dr. Kearns explains to Gil 
that "to me, it's the Mona Lisa."

FLASH OF GENIUS runs 1:59.  It is rated PG-13 for "brief strong language" 
and would be acceptable for all ages.

The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 3, 2008. 
In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century 
theaters and the Camera Cinemas.

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