The film falls back on the myth of modernity being born in the laps of practical, native-born American ingenuity.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 29, 2019

The Current War seems to have suffered from its tumultuous production history. Or, just maybe, it was always destined to be this ungainly.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 4, 2019

Top-hatted, frock-coated, mutton-chopped chaps burbling on about the relative advantages of the alternating current versus direct current system does not, in fact, make for electrifying drama.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 27, 2019

The film's release was duly paused and in the two years since there have been reshoots, five new scenes added and ten minutes cut from the original Toronto version. It's still a dirge. It's flat and repetitive.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 27, 2019

Given the subject matter, it's a disappointingly unstimulating affair.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 26, 2019

So now the film deserves to be considered in its own right, all taint removed. And? It's still a turkey.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 26, 2019

The Current War heaves itself around... but still fails to illuminate its subject at all well - squinting at footnotes, and weirdly failing to see the wood for the trees.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 25, 2019

The script is prolix. The science is sometimes opaque. And Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's film is dressed to kill, though the only murder victim is the movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 24, 2019

Unlike its battling protagonists, The Current War is not out to set the world alight. Still, it looks ever so handsome and the wallpaper deserves special mention.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 24, 2019

A stylish portrayal of a literal power struggle based on truly interesting historical figures and events. But it tries to take in too much in too little time, when all it needed was to centre on Edison and Westinghouse.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 22, 2019

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon rides to the rescue with style to spare. Eye-catching cinematography (Chung-hoon Chung), production design (Jan Roelfs) and art direction (Stephen Bream) make the footage a joy to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 19, 2017

A torpidly slow epic with a script that moves at the speed of light, the film is pockmarked with incidents that never cohere into a clear narrative.

| Original Score: D | Sep 12, 2017

Apart from those nutty camera angles and lenses, which throw you out of the action, The Current War is absorbing ...

| Sep 12, 2017

The prevailing mood of The Current War is indifference; there's no point listing the crimes against the past committed by Michael Mitnick's dramatically inept script ...

| Original Score: C- | Sep 11, 2017

What it can't do ... is generate even the slightest bit of interest in what happens to any of its characters.

| Sep 11, 2017

For all its aggressive energy, The Current War is an uninvolving bore, making it unlikely to measure up as the kind of Oscar-baity prestige entry the Weinstein Company obviously had in mind.

| Sep 10, 2017

This a watchably stylised period film, with interesting visual setpieces and faces looming up at us out of intricately contrived backgrounds.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 10, 2017