Powering the country. Set in 19th century America, this is the battle between the two biggest names in electricity: Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon). Both want to bring electricity across the United States but have different ways that they want to do so. Edison wants to use Direct Current (DC), and Westinghouse wants to use Alternating Current (AC). Who will win the fight? Now, this initially didn’t grab me, as the material seemed a bit on the dry side. Also, if you check out the Wikipedia page on this, you can see how much of a challenge it was to actually get this movie produced (60 screenplay drafts with it originally conceived as a musical), which is rarely a good sign. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon wasn’t ready for it to be released in 2017, so here we are two years later with the director’s cut. I’m glad a positive review steered me into seeing this because I really dug this one.
I will give anything with Michael Shannon a chance, and I mean anything.
Now even though this movie has been keeping a low profile throughout these recent years, there are some pretty big names attached to it. Apart from the aforementioned Cumberbatch and Shannon, you also have Tom Holland and Nicholas Hoult, both of which have proven themselves previously and they don’t phone it in here, either. I really only know this director from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which is a movie that I wanted to like, but never really came around on. He has clearly made a lot of strives in improving his skill set; this moves quickly with fluent camerawork, and I very much enjoyed the craft to this. The score is terrific in this, and it does keep everything buzzing with electric energy, appropriately enough. All this would be for naught if the story wasn’t there, but this rivalry does work, even though these two titans are seldom in the same room together. The story does share that trope found in a lot of romantic comedies in that a lot of this could be solved if these two guys could just have a conversation together, but that actually fuels the story as well; Thomas Edison is presented to be a bit of a jerk, and he refuses to meet his competition halfway. You don’t really feel too bad for him, as he makes his own bed, but it does keep the narrative constantly moving forward.
Oh yeah, and did I mention Tesla is in this as well?
I never saw the original cut of this, but I am guessing that it must have been an editing hack job to call for a re-release like this. But you know what? I’m happy it happened because we eventually got this. The story here is always interesting, and it plays like a chess match, watching these two men match wits while always trying to best one another. I highly enjoyed this and you should check it out if it is playing in your area.
The Current War: Director’s Cut (2017) ****
– Critic for Hire
Critic for Hire 