The Current War: Director's Cut

Name: The Current War: Director's Cut
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Released: October 25, 2019
Duration: 108 min
Rating: 55
Cast: Abigail Johns, Amy Marston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benjamin Schnau, Celyn Jones

2019

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Ratings

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6.3

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6.3	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

The Weinstein Company | Release Date: October 25, 2019 | PG-13

Starring: Abigail Johns, Amy Marston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benjamin Schnau, Celyn Jones, Conor MacNeill, Craig Conway, Damien Molony, David Morley Hale, Emma Davies, Katherine Waterston, Liza Ross, Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Matthew Macfadyen, Michael Shannon, Nancy Crane, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Powell, Robert Jezek, Simon Kunz, Simon Manyonda, Stanley Townsend, Tim Steed, Tom Bell, Tom Holland, Tuppence Middleton, Woody Norman

Summary: Three brilliant visionaries set off in a charged battle for the future in The Current War, the epic story of the cutthroat competition that literally lit up the modern world. Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is on the verge of bringing electricity to Manhattan with his radical new DC technology. On the eve of triumph, his plans areThree brilliant visionaries set off in a charged battle for the future in The Current War, the epic story of the cutthroat competition that literally lit up the modern world. Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is on the verge of bringing electricity to Manhattan with his radical new DC technology. On the eve of triumph, his plans are upended by charismatic businessman George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon), who believes he and his partner, the upstart genius Nikolai Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), have a superior idea for how to rapidly electrify America: with AC current. As Edison and Westinghouse grapple for who will power the nation, they spark one of the first and greatest corporate feuds in American history, establishing for future Titans of Industry the need to break all the rules.… Expand

Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Genre(s): Biography, Drama, History

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 108 min

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Awards & Rankings

47	#47 Most Shared Movie of 2019

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

Soren Andersen

Oct 24, 2019

Conversations about competing business strategies, which take up a great deal of The Current War, would seem to be a recipe for a dull movie. But the fervor and intelligence Cumberbatch and Shannon bring to their roles make for a gripping experience. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

Oct 22, 2019

The Current War is even better than it has to be. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung give the film a swooping elegance, so that shots that start as close-ups gracefully glide into medium shots, and medium shots give way to vistas. The camera is always moving in a way that suggests grace and flow. Read full review

Andy Howell

Oct 30, 2019

The director’s cut of The Current War moves at a faster pace than the original, the characters are better fleshed out, and the drama is more focused where it needs to be. The new cut has elevated the film from mediocre to interesting. Read full review

Dan Jolin

Jul 22, 2019

A stylish portrayal of a literal power struggle based on truly interesting historical figures and events. But it tries to take in too much in too little time, when all it needed was to centre on Edison and Westinghouse. Read full review

James Berardinelli

Oct 24, 2019

Any curiosity surrounding the film may have been misplaced – it’s a bit of a bore. Read full review

David Fear

Oct 25, 2019

It’s not a bad film, just a generically bland one. Read full review

Pat Brown

Sep 29, 2019

The film falls back on the myth of modernity being born in the laps of practical, native-born American ingenuity. Read full review

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User Reviews

NikolaTesla13

Oct 29, 2019

I love this movie! It's the best one I've ever seen. It has a lot of small details that make it great. Again, I love it. It's my favorite movie, surpassing Goblet of Fire and Alice in Wonderland.

0 of 4 users found this helpful04

cloudman

Oct 26, 2019

I found the movie to be excellent. Great acting by Benedict C. and the other protagonists. I learned a lot about the early age of electricity in the USA.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

tropicAces

Oct 31, 2019

I think there is a great movie buried somewhere in here. The script is sharp and has some great lines of Sorkin-esque dialogue, and the performances are solid. As far as historical perilous dramas go, you can do far worse.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

AxeT

Oct 25, 2019

An independent release yet expensive lavish period production with capable cast the subject is compelling to anyone interested in invention, technological history, and the business of genius.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

TVJerry

Oct 29, 2019

This film basically sets up the conflicts of 2 major American electric companies: Westinghouse and General Electric. This first was run by its namesake (played by Michael Shannon), who established an early stronghold with his use of AC current. GE was created to promote the DC version,This film basically sets up the conflicts of 2 major American electric companies: Westinghouse and General Electric. This first was run by its namesake (played by Michael Shannon), who established an early stronghold with his use of AC current. GE was created to promote the DC version, advocated by the great inventor Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch). Toss in dapper foreigner Nikolai Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) for a 3rd visionary's ideas. The film details the development of their systems and the fight to determine who will power our country. As so, it's more an interesting history lesson than an involving drama. There are scant insights into the personal struggles, but not enuff to create any sympathy for the characters. NOTE: This was originally released by the Weinstein Company, but not sanctioned by the director. Obviously, this is his version.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Bertaut1

Oct 26, 2019

Well acted and reasonably engaging, although there's a significant disconnect between form and content

When The Current War debuted in a near-completed form at TIFF in September 2017, it was considered a major contender for the 2018 Academy Awards. Scheduled for a prime awards-seasonWell acted and reasonably engaging, although there's a significant disconnect between form and content

When The Current War debuted in a near-completed form at TIFF in September 2017, it was considered a major contender for the 2018 Academy Awards. Scheduled for a prime awards-season release and with a number of heavyweight producers, Harvey Weinstein was overseeing the assemblage of the final cut in October when he was accused of sexual assault, and when he abandoned the project, the November release was shelved. So now, it's finally been released with director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon re-editing it, adding five additional scenes but trimming the overall run time by 10 minutes. Is it worth the wait? Well, it's competently acted, reasonably entertaining, and moderately informative, but.... It's certainly not as bad as a lot of critics have made out, but there's no denying that Gomez-Rejon over-directs, with a lot of the aesthetic drawing attention to itself, primarily because the elaborate direction is so out of sync with Michael Mitnick's by-the-numbers script.

Telling the story of the "war of the currents", the race between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch proving once again that he can't do an American accent) and George Westinghouse (an uncharacteristically non-psychotic Michael Shannon) to "light America". Whereas Edison favours large-scale low-voltage direct current (DC), Westinghouse favours high-voltage alternating current (AC), using transformers to step down the voltage. Edison's is the safer of the two systems, but so too is it more expensive, with a limited range compared to AC. The rest of the film takes place over the next 13 years as the two men come into direct conflict, culminating in 1893 as each attempt to secure the contract for the Chicago World's Fair.

The most immediately notable aspect of The Current War is Gomez-Rejon's direction. Watching the film, I was reminded of Adrian Martin's 1992 article, "Mise-en-scène is dead, or the expressive, the excessive, the technical and the stylish", in which he divides mise-en-scène into three broad categories: classical ("in which there is a definite stylistic restraint at work"), expressive ("general strategies of colour coding, camera viewpoint, sound design and so on enhance or reinforce the general "feel" or meaning of the subject matter"), and mannerist ("performs out of its own trajectories, no longer working unobtrusively at the behest of the fiction"). The Current War is a good example of mannerism.

Some of Gomez-Rejon's aesthetic choices are definitely justified, but a lot are in the service of nothing but themselves. An early example of a justified decision is a shot looking directly down on an elaborate circular light demonstration by Edison, instantly showing us his theatricality, plus the effectiveness of the demonstration. Introducing Westinghouse, a lengthy single-take shot follows him as he weaves his way through a throng of guests at a ball, with virtually everyone trying to catch his attention. This establishes him as a man of influence, but one who abhors the spotlight. In a later scene, Gomez-Rejon shoots Edison and his family in a train carriage using a fisheye lens. With Edison on one seat and his wife and two children facing him, the wide lens distorts the space between them unnaturally, mirroring the theme of Edison neglecting his family.

On the other hand, so many of his choices are hard to rationalise. In their 2001 book, Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis, Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland say of the mannerist style, "style is autonomous, for it is not linked to function, but draws attention to itself. In other words, style is not motivated or justified by the subject matter, but is its own justification". This is as apt a description of large portions of The Current War as you're going to find. The plethora of Dutch angles, for example, are more often than not arbitrary. So too the use of split-screen, which is used without rhyme nor reason.

The handling of the characters is also problematic. Cumberbatch plays Edison as virtually identical to his portrait of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014), and the film has a habit of downplaying the supporting characters. The worst example is Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), who is very much an afterthought, so under-developed that one wonders if it would have been better to leave him out altogether.

Nevertheless, as serious as these problems are, I rather enjoyed The Current War. It was never going to be the kind of Oscar contender that was intended, but the behind-the-scenes turmoil and the critical mauling are not necessarily indicative of an inherently bad film. Sure, the script is weak in places, and Gomez-Rejon employs every camera trick known to man, more often than not without knowing why. But for all that, it kept me interested, and I did, for the most part, enjoy it.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

JEsFsF

Apr 4, 2020

I really wanted to like this film. I saw the poor critical reviews, but thought that, being a fan of science, it couldn't be worse than a middling documentary...

My takeaway feeling is: how could they have made such an exciting scientific slugout so DULL? And how did I learn NOTHING overI really wanted to like this film. I saw the poor critical reviews, but thought that, being a fan of science, it couldn't be worse than a middling documentary...

My takeaway feeling is: how could they have made such an exciting scientific slugout so DULL? And how did I learn NOTHING over the course of 100 minutes.

I couldn't figure out what each scene was for, the conflict they were trying to resolve at any given point (other than AC vs DC). Some beautiful scenes. Some earnest effort. Completely wasted opportunity. If you're looking to learn about this "war", I'd bet KhanAcademy would be more dramatic. Definitely more informative.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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