Flash of Genius

Flash of Genius (2008) tells the story of a real lawsuit, and the subject sounds small: the intermittent windscreen wiper. Robert Kearns is an engineer who also teaches. In 1964 he designs a wiper that works on the rhythm of a blink and patents it. He takes it to the big Detroit manufacturers. They all decline. Then from 1969 that exact mechanism starts appearing on their cars. Kearns sues, and the case runs for twelve years. The real subject is not money. Ford offers a settlement at one point and he refuses; what he wants is not a payment but a record that the invention was his. He fires his lawyers one after another and argues much of the case himself. The cost is severe. His mental health breaks down during the process and his marriage ends. The film does not hide this; Kearns is not a likeable hero but an obsessive man who is at times unfair to his family. He wins in the end. A jury finds for him against Ford and the company eventually pays over ten million dollars; the Chrysler case brings more than eighteen million. The figure he originally asked for was three hundred million. Greg Kinnear plays it with restraint. It runs 119 minutes. Good for: true stories, courtroom drama, and quiet films. Less good for: the pace is slow, there is no action, and it deals with the collapse of a family.