"Flash of Genius": a crusade for justice ... at all costs

Standing on principle isn't always pretty. Take Robert Kearns, the subject of "Flash of Genius."

The real-life Kearns, who died in 2005, applied for and received, in 1967, the patent on his design for the intermittent windshield wiper. (You know: that switch in your car that allows you to adjust the frequency with which your wipers do their job.)

Kearns, according to the film, showed his prototype to the Ford Motor Co., which expressed interest but later withdrew their initial offer of a contract. Sometime later, Ford began installing intermittent wipers in their new cars, devices that looked a lot like the one Kearns created. (Chrysler did the same thing, a fact that is understated in "Flash of Genius.")

Kearns sued for patent infringement, and the case went on for years. And years. Kearns' blind determination to become a footnote in history as the true creator of the wiper cost him his wife, six kids, job, home, friends and much else.

You can check Kearns out right now on Wikipedia if you want to see where all of this led. Or you can take in "Flash of Genius" and confront your own unnerving desire to see Kearns cave in while on the road to vindication.

In a peculiar variation on such crusader movies as "Erin Brockovich," "Flash of Genius" makes one face an uncomfortable ambivalence about Kearns' self-destructive mission. Sure, by the tenet of the movie, he's right and Ford's wrong. Does that matter more than his children? His marriage? For Kearns, the answer is yes, making his brand of heroism a hard pill to swallow.

But that's the way producer-director Marc Abraham wants it: a different kind of conflict that doesn't easily impart the vicarious thrill of justice sought. We might be talking about windshield wipers instead of industry pollution in "Flash of Genius," but somehow justice seems more dear in this odd movie. It also seems more expendable, and that's the rub.

As the complicated and monomaniacal Kearns, Greg Kinnear is at his best capturing the character's disintegration from affable if quirky family man to mentally unstable martyr. He also bluntly depicts the way Kearns becomes, years later, a jerk whose only interest in his oldest son is how the latter can help him advance his lawsuit.

The rest of the cast is equally memorable. Lauren Graham is graceful as Kearns' devoted (and fecund) wife, trying to cope with the shock of her husband's unanticipated, dark changes. Alan Alda strikes (intentionally so) a spuriously golden note as an attorney full of easy hopes. Dermot Mulroney is perfect as Kearns' friend and opposite: the sort of grounded wheeler-dealer to whom the good life seems to come naturally.

The film loses some steam when it eventually turns into a boxy courtroom drama. But for the most part, "Flash of Genius" messes with one's equanimity, for a lot of good reasons.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com