The Movie Nut

"Flash of Genius" is a film that might not have garnered much interest a decade ago, when corporate America quietly went about its business of doing business. So long as the shareholders were happy, few questions were asked. But somewhere along the line, a big slice of big business confused capitalism with greed. Suddenly, just how America does do business seems to matter.

Back in the happy, pre-'Nam, pre-hippie 1960s, an engineer named Bob Kearns invented the intermittent windshield wiper. Not exactly the stuff of spine tingles or boffo cinema, but in Detroit, the major automobile manufacturers were trying to invent the same thing. The only problem was, they couldn't make it work.

Bob (Greg Kinnear) took his invention to Ford Motor Co., who gave him a pat on the back and told him to wait for their call. Bob waited—but the call never came. The following year, Ford introduced the wiper on their cars. Bob never saw a dime.

A quiet, unassuming family man, Bob couldn't put the betrayal to rest. He eventually filed a lawsuit against Ford. Everyone told Bob he couldn't win. Ford could afford to tie up the court system for years and suck every dollar from his account. But disbelief turned to despair, and with it came an obsession that washed over Bob's life like a red tide. He couldn't let go.

"Flash of Genius" is the story of Bob Kearns' battle with Ford—a film told with simple, straightforward sincerity. There's little room in the world of intermittent windshield wipers for SFX or Cineplex-style pizzazz— some might even call the film a snoozer.

Yet I found Kinnear's portrayal of the geekish Kearns utterly fascinating—Kinnear wearing Kearns' quiet angst like an emotional hair shirt. Even as his family and his sanity disintegrated, Bob could focus on nothing but what he considered to be Ford's betrayal.

When Ford eventually offered him millions to drop his suit, but with no acknowledgment of Kearns as the inventor, he persisted. As a "trial" film or as a tension-twisting nail-biter, this one barely rates. But as a linear, no-frills character sketch of one man's lonely crusade, Kinnear's bravado performance is astounding and, for drama fans, well worth the look.

In 1962, Ernie Davis, dubbed "The Emira Express" by the press, became the first AfricanAmerican to win collegiate football's prestigious Heisman trophy. "The Express" is a sometimes paperthin yet ultimately inspirational story of Davis' career at Syracuse University.

In terms of raw gridiron action, "The Express" has neither the dramatic punch of "Friday Night Lights" nor the racial tension of "Remember the Titans." Instead, the film settles into the familiar territory of a glossy biopic, unwilling to commit to either illuminating the racism of the day or to delving into the psyche of Ernie Davis (as did, say, "The Greatest Game Ever Played," about caddyturnedU.S. Open-champion Francis Ouimet, and a splendid commentary not about racism, but about classism).

"The Express" doles out familiar glimpses of similar themes—the charismatic grandfather, the racist teammate, the affable best friend, the reluctant coach. Rob Brown does a nice job playing Davis with both quiet resignation and wide-eyed amazement (at meeting Syracuse alum Jim Brown, for instance), but one suspects director Gary Fleder could have allowed Brown far more depth.

In a sense, the film's first half is merely a setup, because "The Express" finally finds its heart well into the midst of Davis' brilliant career at Syracuse. On Jan. 1, 1960, the undefeated Orangemen bussed south to play Texas State in the Cotton Bowl.

That game alone could have sufficed as the film's backdrop, as a mesmerizing microcosm of Davis' life—a young, Northernborn black man suddenly confronting the segregated, racially charged South and a footballfrenzied Texas State crowd.

Davis was not permitted the same accommodations as his white teammates. Named the Cotton Bowl's MVP, Davis was allowed to receive his trophy but was told he could not otherwise linger at Texas State's all-white banquet. To the credit of Coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) and teammates, Syracuse boycotted the festivities. Now that's the stuff of legend, of pure movie magic. Too bad the film doesn't linger.

Because "The Express" quickly barrels on, touching on Davis' draft by the Cleveland Browns in 1963 (one can only imagine what the Browns' backfield combination of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis might have meant to the history of the sport). But Davis never played professionally. If you don't know the events that followed, even if you do—"The Express" offers superficial but ultimately sufficient insight into one man's brief legend.