The Current War *** (2017, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland, Nicholas Hoult, Katherine Waterston, Matthew Macfadyen, Tuppence Middleton) – Movie Review

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s The Current War is an impressive staging of a fascinating story, with a quartet of intense performances from Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Tom Holland and Nicholas Hoult.

Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) battle it out to determine who will win the race to establish the electrical system to power the modern world, make a fortune and go down in fame to posterity. A couple of other geniuses, Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) and Samuel Insull (Tom Holland), stand on the sidelines.

First Edison, supported by Insull and backed by J P Morgan (Matthew Macfadyen), dazzles America by electric lighting Manhattan. But then Westinghouse, aided by Tesla, stakes everything on his risky and dangerous alternating current system, in a war of currents with Edison’s flawed direct current design.

Perhaps The Current War lacks excitement, or dazzlingly bright illumination, but it is powerful as a thoughtful, intelligent, old-fashioned piece, carefully written by playwright Michael Mitnick. It is also a pretty good history lesson, brisk and efficient, so no one need go to sleep at the back of the class. It provides either a good refresher course or new information video, depending on how clued up you are beforehand. Talking of illumination, it is often startlingly spectacular visually, using CGI to proper and necessary advantage for once. Gomez-Rejon provides a lot of thrilling Victorian atmosphere, conjuring up a vanished world of darkness, and makes his movie look good, sometimes great.

Holland and Hoult are good, though they have surprisingly little to do, Katherine Waterston and Tuppence Middleton get a tiny little look in as Marguerite Westinghouse and Mary Edison, but the film belongs to Cumberbatch and Shannon. And in the battle between Cumberbatch and Shannon, it is Shannon who wins the day, just like his character wins too. Cumberbatch has a good Victorian feel but not much of an American vibe. Shannon smoulders on a permanently short fuse, while Cumberbatch is a firecracker. They are yin and yang, well matched as do or die opponents. The actors help to ensure that it is a good, fair, hard-won battle of the titans.

It is quite charming that the film is way out of its time, a throwback to a gentler, much earlier age. It is the kind of historical biopic movie they used to make in the Thirties: Young Tom Edison (1940) with Mickey Rooney and Edison, the Man (1940) with Spencer Tracy.

It debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2017 and finally got its UK release on 26 July 2019.

Gomez-Rejon’s previous films were The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014) and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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