By Evan Lucken
While sitting in the theater watching The Current War, my mind couldn’t help but wander to the film, The Prestige. What came to mind is that in The Prestige, one of the side plots showed Nikola Tesla helping one of two at war magicians. Telsa builds an electrifying machine for one of the magicians but before it’s delivered, he’s run out of town by men from Edison.
In these few scenes on this side story of a film about magicians, it contained a much more dramatic sense of rivalry between these two electric rivals than The Current War carries in its entire film.
The Current War follows Thomas Edison (Cumberbatch), Geoge Westinghouse (Shannon), Nikola Telsa (Hoult) and Samuel Insull (Holland), four men who shaped how electricity spanned the United States and the world. Edison is betting on Direct Current to bring light to the masses while Westinghouse out of necessity invests in Alternating Current which would be a cheaper, more efficient and wider-reaching system. Tesla, as a third player is looking at far loftier and abstract solutions that would make electrical motors a reality. With such prolifically important figures that left such an impact in history, it’s remarkable how boring their story is told.
While the cast is packed with great actors who do, to their credit, give great performances, their characters have very little direct interactions with one another. Even their conflicts aren’t so much personal as they are simple differing opinions and methods to the same ultimate goal. More detrimental to the story is that no new technology is being invented for the majority of the film so we are left watching as Edison and Westinghouse try to expand their electrical grids to different cities around the country. The competition isn’t well presented either. Edison has better bulbs and more reputation and publicity on his side, but Westinghouse has a cheaper more expansive method. Edison’s only recourse is to try to publicize the potential dangers of Alternating Current as the two bid for lighting the Chicago World Fair.
The pacing is all over the place, speeding through some moments and lingering on others. Early on in the film, we are introduced to the main players through short scenes as Edison is looking for an investment for Edison Works, Westinghouse gets snubbed by Edison which pushes him to start his own path. The effort of the story to keep these characters apart makes no sense and leaves us to skip too many events that don’t bring any real rise or stakes. The movie tries to bring some flash and style through some odd transitions but they ultimately felt out of place and inserted with little true intent. Throughout, none of the characters were given moments of any meaningful motivation that makes me root for either side.
I really can’t think of a reason to recommend this movie. It’s a plodding drudge of a film that makes little use of its historically fascinating world changer and the cast embodying them. While some scenes brought some momentary flickers of potential they were too few and much too late in the film to make me want to care. If the film had taken more time to the true invention of the technology being battled over, and the inventors’ personal investments to their work I think it could have been much more engaging. It’s a real disappointment that The Current War didn’t click.