One of the great things in this country is competition, which is why anti-monopoly laws exist. With some of the great business wars like Coke Vs. Pepsi, we come to another one in “The Current War: Director’s Cut” in the race to be the one to bring electricity to the world.
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Michael Shannon (99 Homes), Nicholas Hoult (Dark Phoenix), Matthew Macfayden (Frost/Nixon), Tuppence Middleton (War & Peace) and Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming), the story starts in the 1880s as the lightbulb and electricity are a new thing. Thomas Edison (Cumberbatch) has just received the patent on the lightbulb and wants to put electricity around the country using the DC current, while J.P. Morgan (Macfadyen), Edison’s reluctant financier, has his own ideas, which Edison. There is also George Westinghouse (Shannon), who has the vision of using AC/DC current because it is cheaper and more efficient as well as Nikola Tesla (Hoult), who has previously worked with both men, and the race is on.
I really enjoyed the look of this film, and I could tell how much work was put in to make it look correct for the time period. The acting is good overall, with Cumberbatch and Shannon do a great job, even with the high bar I set for them. Even though they only have one scene together, they fed off of each other really well with one character trying to outdo the other.
I did have some issues that are hard to explain for a film this good. For instance. I wish there would have been more on the story of Tesla than it did as well as some of the other smaller details, especially with a one hundred and ten minute runtime, that still felt right. “The Current War: Director’s Cut” is still good overall, but it is like eating a dish for a restaurant that you had many times before in the past, but this time, it was not great because it is missing something you can’t quite figure out. With awards season coming up, it will not surprise me if this film gets some nominations, especially from the cast, so I will recommend this film, but down to a twilight showing in the theaters.