An actor so effortlessly charming and endearing that you assume, deep down, he must be harboring some kind of filthy secret, Greg Kinnear has been perfectly cast in “Flash of Genius,” Marc Abraham’s fact-based drama about an all-American family man driven to madness when corporate America tries to take credit for one of his groundbreaking inventions.
Too bad the rest of the movie seems to have been crafted on an assembly line that specializes in inspirational tales of ordinary Davids triumphing over merciless Goliaths.
Kinnear gives it his all here, lending dark shadings to a familiar cinematic figure (see Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker”). But Abraham so belabors his central theme, and he’s so determined to put a lump in the viewer’s throat, that he ends up losing sight of what makes the story interesting in the first place.
“Flash of Genius” introduces us to university engineering professor and part-time inventor Bob Kearns (Kinnear), who, in 1962, while driving home from church with his family, experiences the titular lightning bolt: Why, he wonders, can’t automobile windshield wipers operate like the human eyeball and be designed to wipe intermittently?
It might not sound like much, but at the time all the major auto companies were working on this elusive invention.
When Kearns figured out the secret to making this new wiper work, and partnered with a local auto dealer (Dermot Mulroney) to bring the design to Ford, he assumed he’d soon be a millionaire.
Enter the corporate slimeballs.
The first hour of “Flash of Genius” is a familiar slog, designed to make the audience sympathize with this earnest soul who just wants to get credit where credit is due. Except no one seems to have told Abraham that Kearns didn’t write “Hamlet” or cure cancer.
In the second half, Kearns goes on an almost messianic crusade to get credit for his design and to bring Ford Motor Co. to court. Forsaking the wishes of his wife (Lauren Graham) and the practical advice of his lawyer (a sterling Alan Alda), he turns into a bristling unlikable figure.
With each successive scene, Kinnear’s performance turns darker and knottier. The actor shows us that just beneath that all-American veneer lurks a man whose ego tramples everything in sight.
