Publication Date: 01-21-2026

Flash of Genius (2008) review

Dir. Marc Abraham

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

The release of Marc Abraham’s Flash of Genius in late 2008 couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time, given the recent global financial crisis that left millions out of work while banks and executive walked away largely unscathed. The story concerns Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), the inventor of an important feature on cars we don’t really consider until we need them, if even then — intermittent windshield wipers. Before Kearns’ idea became an invention adopted by almost every automobile on the planet, windshield wipers only had one speed, which produced a cloying, squeaky sound due to their constant nature and obscured the vision of a partially blind Kearns. Kearns, while driving a Ford car with his wife Phyllis (Lauren Graham, Bad Santa) and six children in the 1960s, a college engineering professor and former engineer himself, wondered why windshield wipers couldn’t have a “stop and go” kind of nature, or better yet, different speed settings due to the varying intensities of rain.

His compelling shower thought would’ve been only that if he didn’t, in a sense, dry off and get to work on it right away. Coining it the “blinking eye” wiper, Kearns spent the next several months perfecting a prototype in his basement laboratory, where he tests his wipers in a fish tank before installing them on a vehicle. He is assisted financially by Gil Previck (Dermot Mulroney), with the hopes that he can get a healthy offer from a car company, who, according to sources, are spending a great deal of money trying to craft a similar invention for their automobiles’ wipers. Kearns’ trick when presenting his invention to different car companies is not to tell them the innerworkings of his wipers, so they’re more inclined to assist with his patent-ambitions and strike a deal. His best bet is Ford, who he presents the wipers to and expects a call back in due time.

Weeks go by with no response from Ford following Kearns’ presentation and when the Ford Mustang is unveiled with the intermittent wipers as a selling point, Kearns realizes that Ford is attempting to steal and profit from his idea. When he tries to challenge them and is willing to take his case to court, he finds out that Ford has lawyers that possess infinite patience to stall the trial, in addition to making it so he doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes time to present his case. Nonetheless, despite his career and his children to care for, Kearns accepts the challenge to contest Ford’s practices in court and get credit and compensation for his invention.

Greg Kinnear’s performance as Kearns is precisely the king of performance we, as seasoned film lovers, have grown to expect and love from Kinnear. His roles almost always concern a troubled or stressed character that has one or two flaws that we can recognize in the people we’ve come to met over the course of our lives. In Flash of Genius, Kinnear’s character’s sole flaw is his inability to give up when he’s down and out, a move that puts the livelihood and financial wellbeing of his family in significant financial detriment. One probably doesn’t have to do too much convincing to Kearns that he’s between a rock and a hard place when it comes to taking on Ford, but for him, it’s either that or allowing an invention that took time and effort to concoct and perfect to be stolen and mass-produced without a care.

That’s the biggest problem when it comes to corporations – the idea that soaring popularity and double-digit growth in profits is never enough. The endless, arguably cyclical concept of greed has these ubiquitous, unstoppable entities in constant pursuit for ostensibly unobtainable progress so much that everyone else, everyone from unionized workers to the common person, gets crushed as a result. Flash of Genius showcases this by transporting us back decades to show this kind of “corporate greed” isn’t a new phenomenon, and due to the history and structure of America, likely won’t change in the near-future.

The film is as much of a quietly pessimistic drama/biopic as it is a competently told one, and for the most part, Flash of Genius works at simply detailing the narrative of Kearns’ work, life, and legal battle with Ford. The problem is it’s exactly that; a predictable film where half of the battle takes place in boardrooms and the other half occurs in the courtroom. While the film lacks in the perfunctory theatricalities most of these films embrace, the result does make for a wooden and occasionally droll look at an important and timely story. Kinnear livens the best he can and Abraham does everything the best he can in the sense of being a first time director to make this film and its contents interesting, but ultimately, it works just about as much as it doesn’t, making for a film that rests on the fine line of average throughout its two hour runtime.

Starring: Greg Kinnear, Dermot Mulroney, and Lauren Graham. Directed by: Marc Abraham.