Film Review - The Current War (2020)

The Current War stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison, the man who helped invent the light bulb and is now in a race against George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) to now take that technology and apply it to general electricity generation, a race that could turn very bitter.

The Current War is a movie that got caught up in the Weinstein mess of 2017 and has now finally made its way to cinemas at the height of a global pandemic that has got everything going shut and everyone behind closed doors and the movie itself isn’t awful by any means but its also nothing special either.

Don’t get me wrong it’s always good to see Mr Cumberbatch and Mr Shannon go at it and they are very good in the film Cumberbatch in particular is always a pleasure to watch in a movie though his scenes with Tom Holland felt a bit strange given they are Spider-Man and Dr Strange in the Marvel movies respectively, Katherine Waterston is also pretty good here as Westinghouse’s wife and Nicholas Hoult is good as well as Nikola Telsa.

But for a movie that should be compelling to watch with 2 great talents anchoring it, the movie never feels like it gets to breathe and let it play out, so much goes by so quickly with lots of quick cuts and cutting to various years that it all feels like it goes by in a rush when you would prefer the film to take its time and let its audience get invested in the story and the production design and the performances which are pretty good but again everything goes by so quickly it feels like a film that was edited to bits before release and given the turmoil this movie went through I wouldn’t be surprised.

And that was the Current War and its fine perfectly fine but the film feels too fast and too heavily edited to let its story breathe, 2 out of 5.