This was a 2008 release that\u2019s based on a true story.\u00a0 Greg Kinnear plays Bob Kearns, an engineering professor in the Detroit area in the 1960s who along with his wife Phyllis (played by Lauren Graham from the Gilmore Girls) and their six kids are living a happy mid-western existence.\u00a0 One day Bob was driving and he came across the difficulty of having single speed wipers in a light rain.\u00a0 If he left the windshield wipers on then the window would get dry and the blades would squeak and streak, but if he left them off, he couldn\u2019t see.\u00a0 Being an inventor, he came up with an electronic device that allowed the wipers to work with a variable delay between cycles, now known as intermittent wipers.\u00a0 With the help of a friend who had an automotive component company he approaches Ford Motor Company about them purchasing his wiper invention to use in their cars.\u00a0 They convince him they need to have a copy of the device to get it approved by the federal agency that oversees automotive safety equipment and he provides it to them.\u00a0 Kearns leases factory space and goes into production on the device.\u00a0 Then Ford backs out of the deal and starts producing essentially the same device on their own.<\/p>\n
The rest of the movie chronicles Bob\u2019s twenty-year crusade to bring Ford to justice for stealing his invention.\u00a0 During that time, he loses his job, his wife and almost his mind.\u00a0 At a certain point he becomes so desperate that he jumps on a bus to Washington D.C. to \u201ctalk to the White House\u201d about his problem.\u00a0 This lands him in a mental ward for several months.\u00a0 When he gets out, he hires a lawyer to sue Ford for stealing his idea.\u00a0 The lawyer (played by Alan Alda) gets an agreement from Ford to pay Bob several hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle.\u00a0 But when he finds out that Ford wouldn\u2019t be admitting to the theft, just paying him off, Bob balks and refuses to give up his crusade against Ford.\u00a0 At this point he\u2019s several years into this nightmare and without a job.\u00a0 His wife, exhausted with raising six kids and supporting the family leaves him.<\/p>\n
Now alone and miserable, he spends all his waking hours teaching himself the law applying to theft of intellectual property and fighting off Ford\u2019s counter-suits and other delaying tactics.\u00a0 Finally, twelve years after initiating the effort his suit goes to trial.\u00a0 He represents himself and blunders through the various amateur shortcomings of being a make-believe lawyer.\u00a0 But as the end of the trial approaches Ford\u2019s representative suddenly offers him thirty million dollars to drop the suit.\u00a0 He refuses and everything comes down to the jury decision.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t give away the ending but I will comment on the dilemma of this poor man.\u00a0 Basically, he traded away the best years of his life and the happiness of a family for the chance to get justice from a court over being robbed of an invention.\u00a0 I am an engineer but I\u2019ve never had a \u201cflash of genius.\u201d\u00a0 But I think as much as I am a vindictive bastard, I\u2019d have recognized that spending decades of my prime and losing the woman I love to be proven right is an obsessive-compulsive fool\u2019s errand.\u00a0 Even if you win, you\u2019ve lost.\u00a0 A corporation is an immortal being with godlike power.\u00a0 It can outlive you and overpower you.\u00a0 The best thing you can do is steer clear of them.\u00a0 They are by definition soulless and amoral.\u00a0 I think the lesson learned from this movie is that life is short.\u00a0 Justice that costs you your reason for living is too costly for real people.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good movie and the character Bob is a recognizable type that I have met several times in my life.\u00a0 And I felt sorry for him but I think he made a big mistake.\u00a0 Good movie about a cautionary tale for nerds.\u00a0 Don\u2019t trust the man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was a 2008 release that\u2019s based on a true story.\u00a0 Greg Kinnear plays Bob Kearns, an engineering professor in the Detroit area in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[1602,1601,43,38],"class_list":["post-5506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-flash-of-genius","tag-greg-kinnear","tag-movie-review","tag-review"],"yoast_head":"\n