Film review: Flash of Genius

Director Marc Abraham
With Greg Kinnear and Alan Alda
Released March 27

A low-key drama about patent law probably won't have audiences racing to their nearest multiplex, especially not when they hear that the law refers to the decidedly unsexy subject of windscreen wipers. But readers may well find that Flash of Genius speaks to them more than any other film this year.

Based on a true story, it features Greg Kinnear as Robert Kearns, an engineering lecturer and father of six who lives and works in Detroit in the early 1960s. The city is the capital of America's car industry, and yet, to Kearns's frustration, every vehicle that rolls off the production lines has the same limitation: the windscreen wipers can move at only one speed, however heavy the rainfall, so they're too slow to be much help in a downpour, but too fast for a light shower. Pottering in his basement, Kinnear quickly hits upon an "intermittent" wiper mechanism, which has evaded all of the car companies' brightest minds.

To the 21st century viewer, the design seems simple, but the executives at Ford are so impressed by Kearns's invention that they sign him up to manufacture the devices for them. But no sooner has he opened the champagne than the deal is called off, with no explanation or compensation. A year and a half later, Ford is fitting cars with its own brand of intermittent wiper, which works on a suspiciously similar principle to the one developed by Kearns.

And so he begins the long, arduous process of suing one of the world's most powerful corporations, even though everyone around him advises him not to waste his time. With its courtroom debates, its family schisms, and its hero who puts everything on the line for what he believes in, the story has all the ingredients of a classic, big-screen David and Goliath clash. You can easily imagine Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise in the lead role. But in Flash of Genius, the narrative is steady and understated. For all its drawbacks and triumphs, Kearns's battle seems more like a punishing grind than a defiant campaign, while the man himself isn't a glamorous or even a likeable figure.

His stubborn zeal consumes years of his life, and alienates those closest to him: his lawyer (Alan Alda), his best friend (Dermot Mulroney) and, finally, his wife (Lauren Graham). In most Hollywood films, the little man's defence of his intellectual property is always noble, but Flash of Genius acknowledges that there's a price to pay in any business dispute, and leaves us to decide whether the price paid by Kearns was too high.

Nicholas Barber