What should've been a very good movie instead underwhelmed & left me wondering how it missed the mark by a country mile. There were too many annoying scenes with Edison (Cumberbatch) that made him appear nothing more than whiny and pompous, and not enough scenes defining Westinghouse (Shannon) so the audience knew "who was who" when it came to delivering electricity to American cities. Having said that, this movie basically ignored Nikola Tesla (Hoult) except for portraying him as a spendthrift and a deadbeat, all but omitting his significant contributions to the standardized A/C current we know today. I especially hated the scene when Tesla was called an "immigrant" as an obvious insult, even though in 1880 America 90% of Americans were immigrants. If Tesla was insulted in those times it would've been an ethnic insult that specified his birthplace in Europe, not his current "status" in America. This was an obvious attempt to slam "1880 America" by inserting 2021 politics. Also, having been to the Nikola Tesla museum in Beograd (Belgrade), Serbia I can tell you this movie really shortchanged the audience from getting a much better idea of who Tesla was and his brilliant hydroelectric power designs which were way beyond anything Edison or Westinghouse had done. Finally, there was way too much material to work with for the movie to be this big of a dud. Grade: C-
Review of The Current War
