After a tumultuous production history that involved a fight with Harvey Weinstein, a badly mangled cut premiering at Toronto two years ago, and the director wresting his work back from Weinstein and releasing the version that he wanted, The Current War hits theaters today. It’s a curiously stylized drama about the electricity innovation battle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison.
The figures behind the AC/DC war of the 1880s and ‘90s were certainly larger than life, and so that is where screenwriter Michael Mitnick and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon put most of their energies. But there is just no getting around the fact that this is a drama about men in top hats arguing over the best electrical current to use…
Chris Barsanti 