Film Review - The Current War (12A)

My boys and I caught in a jar what before now has only flashed across the night sky.

The Current War tells of the 19th Century battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse for supremacy in America's burgeoning electrical industry. The story has such epic scope and deals with cultural upheaval so vast that it's surprising no one has attempted to put it on screen before. But sadly while director Alfonsa Gomez-Rejon's effort gives off sparks of the situation's innate drama, it never shines with the kind of illumination promised by that core idea.

Michael Shannon plays Westinghouse, the entrepreneur who having devoted himself to gas distribution becomes fascinated by Edison's harnassing of electricity as a power source. Edison's refusal to meet with him and talk shop leads to a steadily intensifying competition between the two men, Westinghouse combating his rival's direct current system with the creation of alternative current lighting (it's AC versus DC, folks). Into the mix steps Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), the young immigrant scientist whose genius has the capability to give either man the edge. As America lights up state by state and the use of this new electical magic takes some ironically dark turns, the two men resort to dubious means in order to corner the rapidly expanding market.  

It's a wonder of its own that a film with so many bright individual aspects doesn't work as a whole. From its outset there are moments of cinematographic beauty that take you by surprise, of which the haunting gaslight of a passing train and Edison standing amid a forest of lightbulbs are but two. The dialogue has wit and insight, not least when the two vying entrepreneurs finally meet and acknowledge their shared fascination with the force of nature they're both trying to channel. Then there's Chan-wook Park's vital, pulsing score, one that would set your heart racing, were the drama really lighting up.

On top of that is the cast-to-die-for. Cumberbatch brings all his Doctor Strange drivenness and enigma, but with greater humanity. Shannon, so grimly magnetic in Nocturnal Animals and just plain grim in The Shape of Water, finds the warmth underlying Westinghouse's obsession, helped by the ever-radient Katherine Waterson (Fantastic Beasts) as his wife. As for Hoult, check out his performances in The Favourite and Tolkien to witness range and depth and then see how much he does with limited screen-time as the awkwardly brilliant Tesla. Plus it's got another bouyant likeable performance from Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, as Edison's PA Samuel Insull. It takes a lot to screw up with that lot on board.

And yet screw up the film does, by failing to engage it audience, even if there's a clutch of moments where it threatens to do so. There are, I think, two reasons for this. First up is the screenplay - a frustratingly choppy affair that zips through history like current down a power-line, never pausing long enough to let us connect with the characters or grasp the mighty import of all they're trying to achieve. At under two hours this feels like a mini-series' worth of story crammed into a format that leaves you floundering to keep up. That problem is compounded by Gomez-Rejon's direction, possibly a hang-over from the work he's put into successive seasons of American Horror Story. What works in a stylised genre TV-show is a irritation here. Every shot is fisheye-lensed, Dutch-tilting or overhead swirl - artsy showing off that's impressive in itself, but ultimately distracting from a story that's travelling at breakneck pace already. It made me a bit nauseous at points, and even more detached from the story unfolding on-screen.

 

For a reviewer the mark of a good film is how fully you forget you're there to review it. The Current War had so many great ingrediants, starting with an epoch-changing subject and fascinating historical characters - men fired up with grand ideas, who helped to forge the modern world - that I should have been enthralled. The fact that I spent much of the running-time pinning down why I wasn't enjoying it more, suggests how far it felt flat. For all its thematic energy and star-power, this film never shocked me into awe and wonder like it should have done. The voltage was certainly high... but I'm afraid my interest blew a fuse.

Gut Reaction: Not boredom, it wasn't that. Just annoyance that something so potentially great didn't even achieve really good.

Memorable Moment: A very scary electrical invention.

Ed's Verdict: 6/10. Some impressive individual parts earn those points, but the sum of them doesn't add to anything more. The Current War is ambitious, but ultimately botched.