THE CURRENT WAR. Star Cast, SNL-Style Misfire

The great war over electricity, which quite literally electrified the United States at the end of the 19th century, is a rich topic for a cinematic story—one that, surprisingly, hasn’t yet received a star-studded adaptation with Oscar potential. And it will have to wait a bit longer, because The Current War by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, shelved for three years, is definitely not a film capable of shaking up the awards race. Even though some excellent actors appear on screen.

Gomez-Rejon’s film was completed back in 2017 and was supposed to premiere then, but all the plans of The Weinstein Company—under whose wing the film had been developed—fell apart when the (not so well hidden) atrocities of its head, Harvey Weinstein, came to light. The film had its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it received a lukewarm reception, and Weinstein, already neck-deep in scandal, even participated in re-editing the film. But the film’s misadventures didn’t end there. After nearly two years, it landed in the hands of Lantern Entertainment, where it underwent further cuts and changes. After multiple operations on the editing table and several years of being forgotten, the film finally hit theaters in 2019.

And there really was no reason to wait for it—because what ultimately arrived is a hollow historical drama, tailored to beg for Oscar acting nominations, which skims over an intriguing subject with the finesse of a Wikipedia entry being recited aloud. Ostensibly, the core of the story is the battle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse’s competing companies to supply electricity to Americans. But inexperienced screenwriter Michael Mitnick forcefully stuffs in other elements that distract from the main conflict, constantly diluting it until the viewer quickly loses interest. The subplot involving Nikola Tesla is particularly awkward—it was promoted in trailers as crucial, playing off the pop-cultural status of his rivalry with Edison, but in the film, he’s reduced to a few scenes sewn in clumsily, with the great visionary stripped of his stature and relegated to a filler role. And there’s not even much to fill in here, since Gomez-Rejon has no clear idea how to compellingly depict the clash between electric tycoons. The narrative boils down to Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) bringing alternating current to more and more cities while a bitter Edison (an utterly unconvincing Benedict Cumberbatch) sabotages him at every turn—at times, it plays more like an extended SNL sketch crossed with pretentious Oscar bait than a coherent story about two engineering giants.

There’s a lot happening, supposedly, but the more interesting threads are dismissed with quick editing cuts (I haven’t seen such artificial attempts to create pace in a long time), while unnecessary scenes are overblown. The film lacks a deft balancing of subplots and a focus on the genuinely important and intriguing moments. As a result, the whole thing feels like a checklist of “important events” from the war of the currents, ticked off with no deeper commentary before the story rushes to the next one. And at that level, it’s painfully obvious how chopped-up the film is—there’s no cohesive vision here. Instead of immersing us in this naturally engaging historical drama, the film delivers a few technical tidbits, while the people and emotions vanish entirely. The director and writer simply couldn’t handle this profoundly important story for America, and unfortunately, it’s likely to disappear again into the back pages of studio notebooks for years.

This clearly tiresome slog is saved, to a degree, by its cinematography, handled by Park Chan-wook’s frequent collaborator Chung-hoon Chung. There’s not much room for visual fireworks here, but he does his best with what he has. He uses empty spaces with surprising grace, showing his considerable talent—he surprises with unexpected camera angles, thoughtful close-ups, and interesting composition of characters against the backdrop. It’s solid work, but too often lapses into mediocrity, as if Chung was dozing off while visualizing the story.

The actors also struggle with the material but don’t have much to work with—all the characters are cardboard archetypes, occasionally sparking some emotion, but it’s not enough to maintain the intensity of a real conflict. Not for a moment did I believe that Cumberbatch (looking like a typical Cumberbatch) was Edison; there’s too little of Hoult’s Tesla to say anything meaningful about him; and Tom Holland plays a rather lost young man—up until the finale, I wasn’t even sure what his character’s role was. Michael Shannon seems the most interesting, but his character is mainly defined by a large mustache, and he performs on autopilot. For a historical film aiming for Oscars, the lack of a standout performance—the kind that usually powers this type of cinema—is glaring. It seems even the actors lost steam quickly when they saw how sluggish the production was becoming. What we ultimately got is a sort of Darkest Hour, but without a Gary Oldman holding the whole project by the throat. In this clash of great minds, there are no sparks.

The whole film feels like the third season of a History Channel series—the viewer is hit with a lump of exposition and a slew of characters at the start, and then everything plods along to the finale, losing interesting threads along the way while clinging to the uninteresting ones (“Mr. Morgan, give us money for the 600th time”). This story does not deserve such half-hearted treatment or the squandering of acting talent—and it’s painfully clear that no one here wanted to go the extra mile. The stars give performances that are merely adequate, the technical crew (with a few flashes of brilliance) glue it all together with spit so it doesn’t fall apart, and the director and screenwriter buckle under the weight of the topic. A rumored director’s cut seems completely unnecessary—I don’t see any material here worth saving, nor any reason to attempt it.

This could have easily been released on a streaming platform, but the studio clearly wanted to cash in on big names. It’s not worth falling into that trap though—you’ll fall asleep during the screening so hard that not even the electricity used to light the Chicago World’s Fair could wake you up.