blanche-2 Greg Kinnear stars in Flash of Genius, featuring Lauren Graham and Dermot Mulroney.Flash of Genius is the true story of Robert Kearns, an inventor, an engineering teacher and Ph.D who invented the intermittent windshield. While in negotiations with Ford Motor Company, Ford pulled out and decided they didn't want it, even though they had been working on one for years and hadn't come up with a solution.When Kearns sees his windshield on a car, he realizes that Ford has stolen his invention. Though everyone, including his friend and business partner (Mulroney) don't want him to pursue it, and he does, hiring an attorney, Gregory Lawson (Alan Alda). Lawson gets a settlement offer for a quarter of a million dollars. Kearns turns it down for one reason. Ford will not admit they stole his invention, and though they approach him again, he continues to turn them down. Finally, working as his own attorney and with his son's help, he finally gets his day in court.As another poster pointed out, the story is sad in a way because for every Bob Kearns who won't give up, there are hundreds and maybe thousands of people who have invented things, only to see their invention stolen.Kearns suffered through a nervous breakdown, the deterioration of his family, and isolation as he fought his case.Greg Kinnear did a wonderful job as Kearns, a serious, somewhat eccentric, and brilliant man who believed in ethics and integrity.This is a very inspiring story -- it's not easy to make a movie about the invention of a windshield wiper, and maybe it's not the most exciting film I've ever seen, but I liked it.

Mark Main Greg Kinnear was fantastic in this movie as Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent wiper. But there is some very interesting irony with this story as well.Florence Lawrence who was the world's first movie star and received the very first movie credit ever--the movie was "The Broken Oath" released on November 15, 1910.According to Kelly R. Brown's 1999 biography, Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl, she was an avid automobile driver during a period when very few people actually owned cars. In 1914 she invented the first turn signal, which she called an 'auto signaling arm', which attached to the back fender. When a driver pressed a button it electrically raised or lowered a sign attached that indicated the direction of the intended turn. Her brake signal worked on the same principle that an arm with a sign reading 'stop' rose up whenever the driver pressed the brake pedal. This was the essential concept behind today's brake lights.Unfortunately Lawrence did not properly patent her inventions and soon other, more refined versions were invented and brought to market.However, in 1917 with her mother she did patent a system of electrical windshield wipers, but it made no money. By the time the first electrical turn signals became standard equipment on the 1939 Buick, her contributions were long forgotten and she was dead." I find it amazingly ironic that the windshield wiper was a thorn in the side to not only Robert Kearns, the intermittent wiper inventor, but the original wiper inventor as well, Florence Lawrence.

kosmasp I'm not gonna spoil the end or anything, I'm just going to talk about the story, that's why I put the spoiler tag up. I'm always afraid when I read the tag "Based on a true story". Most of the times, it isn't that truthful and if it is, it might get boring or some other things go wrong.In this case everything fit together. The performances, the theme, just everything. Greg Kinnear should be nominated at least for his performance/portrayal. That he is fighting for his rights and that you can see the big company treating him wrong and cheating on their contract from a mile off, doesn't matter that much. After that it's the underdog story. And it doesn't even matter how the movie ends, because as the saying goes: The journey is it's own reward!

dunmore_ego The David versus Goliath story - with David wielding an Intermittent Windshield Wiper.Antonio Meucci, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Alfred Russell Wallace - all these men had their ideas stolen, only credited years, decades after their ideas had entered the fabric of society under other mens' names: the telephone, Superman, evolution...Who knows how many such men there have been over millennia? The nature of ideas is so amorphous, so inscrutable; "Steal from one man - that's plagiarism. Steal from many men - that's research." FLASH OF GENIUS shows us one of those millions who had his idea stolen, and his principled battle to regain credit for that idea: the intermittent windshield wiper.Hard to believe this function once did not exist - but back in the late 1960s, when all windshield wipers only went OFF and ON, college professor and tinkerer, Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear, whom we meet - not coincidentally - lecturing on Ethics), hit upon the idea for the "Blinking Eye Windshield Wiper" (with "variable dwell" - that expression kills me!), a wiper that would function like the human eye - whenever it was necessary.He patents the invention (his "Mona Lisa") through his good friend, Gil Privick (Dermot Mulrooney), who owns an auto dealership. He and Gil shop the Blinking Eye to Ford in Detroit, who promptly steal the idea. Because they're a corporation and thus Bad Guys.So begins Kearns's obsessive, decades-long battle, not for money, but for the right to call the invention his; for Ford to admit their outright theft of his patent.In a cute little irony, long before he went head-to-head with Detroit corps, Kearns called his brood of six kids, "The Board of Directors." In a sadder irony, his wife (Lauren Graham) leaves him because with all his time spent on the court case, he was neglecting his kids - the same kids who would years later all end up clustered in his little apartment, helping him win his case! Alan Alda enters the equation briefly as Gregory Lawson, a power lawyer for Kearns, but when he forces a settlement from Ford and Kearns won't accept it unless Ford also acknowledge they stole his idea, Lawson is outa there, but not before warning Kearns of the difference between principled and pragmatic, "Time means nothing to them, money means nothing to them - they will bury you in countersuits, motions, delays; five years from now, you won't be closer to a resolution. Your hair will turn gray..."And he is right.In court, Ford Corp (represented by CEO Mitch Pileggi, among others) claims the idea for an intermittent wiper was in the works anyway and Kearns simply put a few common components together to finalize the design.And he is right.Kearns, who represented himself in court, countered that argument by reading Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." pointing out that Dickens never invented the words themselves, but put them together in such a fashion that he created something new and spanky.And he is right.The beauty of a good story, that happens to be true: every side is right and every side is wrong.Ford would offer Kearns higher and higher sums of money, through their lawyer who looked like a gangster, Charlie Defao (Tim Kelleher), eventually offering 30 million dollars to drop the case, which Kearns and his grown kids (now truly acting like a Board of Directors) refuse - on the grounds that the settlement still did not come with an admission of theft.Well-paced, well-acted, frustrating, inspiring, poignant, FLASH OF GENIUS is a testament to the power of principles, yet a warning as to the cost of holding onto them with white knuckles. Kearns's family life was destroyed, he suffered a mental breakdown and was in a sanitarium for a brief period.Of course Kearns wins - in the usual manipulative inspirational music swell during the court decision - or this movie would not exist. But it is unfortunate that Kearns's fight did not help the plight of all Inventors. We are all aware of those modern clauses in corporate contracts that claim everything from every individual as attributed to that corporation. There are no real inventors left, no single men allowed to claim that flash of genius. Humanity has been swallowed up by The Man.Robert Kearns was one of the last Real Men to fight The Man, squandering his life to retain his Humanity. On variable dwell.--Review by Poffy The Cucumber (for Poffy's Movie Mania).