| Overall Grade: |
A- |
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| Story: |
A- |
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| Acting: |
A |
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| Direction: |
B+ |
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| Visuals: |
B+ |
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A well orchestrated if not tedious film
by NickI (movies profile)
Oct 2, 2008
12
of
12 people found this review helpful
I just saw the pre release of this movie by complete accident thinking it was another movie. As the movie starts out we are introduced to a happy and prospering young family headed by the father Robert Kearns whom aspires to create something that will help mankind. Robert is an inventor as well as a full time college professor in the field of electrical engineering. He preaches about the importance of ethics for inventors which ended up becoming the central theme of the entire movie. Robert and his close knit family members all join forces in helping to create the "intermittent wiper" a windshield wiper mechanism that will pause between sweeps and is able to change speeds since no such device has been invented at this point. He succeeds in creating such a device and along with his lifetime friend and his allies creates a patent for the device and attempts to join forces with Ford Motor Company. Well needless to say when all things are looking good Ford bulls the rug out from underneath him and steals his design leaving Robert a broken man. Now driven by the single motive of getting credit for what is his he embarks on a long and challenging campaign that slowly changes who he is and distances him from his family priorities. I wont get into any more of the details but Robert's slowly spiraling legal affairs are persistent throughout the latter of the movies and you truly do feel a sense of pity and remorse for Robert as the "little guy" even in the times where he is all too vigilant in his pursuit.
Within the film we are also introduced to Alan Alda's lawyer character who plays a brief but memorable role. The story is basic in its pretense and while most my find a movie about wipers to be boring keep in mind that this was a real life event. During some parts of the movie we lose direction and are left wondering "does anything good happen to this man", Failure after failure we travel down the long road of seeing this man lose everything so in that sense the climax hits soon and its all downhill from there.
I felt as if there was some sort of subliminal marketing against Ford in general, as if GM helped finance this movie but then again this was simply the facts. Acting on other hand is FANTASTIC. Everyone fit into their roles very well and you were able to understand the connection between Robert and his wife. One issue I did have was with his children. It was hard for me to identify with the kids because there were just so many of them and it seems like near the end of the movie you could have gone through the entire film without even caring about any of them so in that sense the family was not quite as established as it could have been.
The movie also seemed to drag in many instances and I simply felt as If I was just sitting there just waiting for the next plot event to happen while instead they just tread water and skip ahead 4 years. It could certainly have been shortened some because it has a tendency to become boring especially near the end as my attention was nearly gone. Overall though movie is sincerely good and felt satisfying after the conclusion. It's not something I would watch again anytime soon but for a passive drama it succeeds very well in telling a story from start to finish. Well worth the money to see it just be prepared to wait the whole thing out. |
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