55
Metascore
24 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreWith this “Director’s Cut,” Gomez-Rejon and his editors have saved a witty, well-acted and gorgeous-looking movie and given it the heart, history and intellectual heft it needed to come off.
- 75San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSan Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleThe Current War is even better than it has to be. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung give the film a swooping elegance, so that shots that start as close-ups gracefully glide into medium shots, and medium shots give way to vistas. The camera is always moving in a way that suggests grace and flow.
- 71The VergeCaroline SiedeThe VergeCaroline SiedeEven if The Current War is soft around the edges and a little soggy in the middle, there’s still something appreciably sparky at its core. As overstuffed and frenetic as the film is, in its best moments, The Current War manages to make an everyday utility seem just as magical as it did 120 years ago.
- 63Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsI never saw the earlier version. This one remains a bit of a mess but a pretty interesting one, as well as one of the few films this year deserving (in both admirable and dissatisfying ways) of the adjective “instructive.”
- 60CineVueLucy PopescuCineVueLucy PopescuThe Current War feels like a history lesson with interesting visuals, rather than a compelling, fully-realised historical drama.
- 58The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerThe A.V. ClubJesse HassengerThe Current War employs actors capable of their own eccentric stylizations, and gives them very little leeway to make the material their own. Gomez-Rejon keeps snatching it back with every offbeat composition idea he can muster.
- 50Washington PostMichael O'SullivanWashington PostMichael O'SullivanThe main problem, despite committed and at times vivid performances by the three main actors — and a mostly perfunctory supporting appearance by Tom Holland as Edison’s loyal assistant Samuel Insull — is the sheer amount of information that the movie tries to convey.
- 40The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeThe Observer (UK)Wendy IdeThere’s an edge of panicky desperation to the film-making – the lurching, swooping cameras; the skittish editing; the arcing lens flare. It all seems a little too eager to distract from the fact that 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.
- 38Slant MagazinePat BrownSlant MagazinePat BrownThe film falls back on the myth of modernity being born in the laps of practical, native-born American ingenuity.