Inventor Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), wife Phyllis (Lauren Graham) and their children admire Dad’s latest invention in the drama based on the true story of one man who took on corporate titans in a battle nobody thought he could win in Flash of Genius.

Universal

Who’d have guessed that a movie about windshield wipers could make for such gripping drama?

Well, it’s not just windshield wipers. The focus of the crisis in Flash of Genius is the intermittent windshield wiper. You know, the ones on every car and truck these days that enable drivers to vary the speed of the wipe depending on the intensity of the rain that’s falling. Everyone takes it for granted. It was always part of the automobile. Wasn’t it?

Well, no.

For years Detroit automakers tried to come up with such a thing for their vehicles to no avail. It wasn’t until the 1960s that a professor named Robert Kearns, working in his basement with a couple of his six children as assistants, put together the right mix of transistors, capacitors and whatnots to make the intermittent windshield wiper — which he at first called “The Kearns Blinking Eye Motor” — a reality.

Through a friend who knew the right people at Ford, he brought it to the honchos at Ford headquarters in Dearborn. They were shocked, enthralled, enthused that this mild-mannered inventor could come from nowhere and create something they had found impossible to do for years.

One might expect — Kearns certainly did — that the results would be instant fame for him and instant riches as well. After all, the intermittent wiper, which he insisted be produced in his own factory, would soon be installed on millions and millions of cars and trucks around the planet.

Nah!

To his horror, Kearns discovered the intermittent wiper on a new crop of Ford Mustangs. But his name was never mentioned in the promotional material. When Kearns tried to speak to the vice president of Ford’s engineering team during an auto show unveiling for the Mustang, he was hustled out.

Thus began a years-long uphill struggle for Bob Kearns. Flash of Genius, of course, is really about Kearns’ obsession with getting recognition for his invention. Eventually it would split his large family, send his devoted wife packing and leave him poring over complex legal documents in hopes of making his case.

All this might not sound even as interesting as watching windshield wipers work. And, truth to tell, one might become frustrated with the film because of Kearns’ obsession with his wiper and his insistence that his name had been sullied to the point where he needed more than the millions of dollars Ford would eventually offer him to make him go away. More than buckets of cash, he needed Ford’s apology. He wanted his name cleared. He was a man fighting for a principle and he would let nothing stand in the way of that.

Greg Kinnear plays Kearns with all the smoldering fire of a church-going man whose passion is the solidity of his reputation. Although there are more than a few times when you might want to scream at Kearns to just take the money and be content to be a very rich man, there’s something that is eventually very noble about this stick-in-the-mud character that refuses to cave and cast aside his principles. Kearns does, after all, teach his college classes about ethics as well as about engineering.

Flash of Genius, whose title refers to the moment when one person sees the possibility of a remarkable idea becoming reality, is about one lonely dreamer refusing to let go of his dream. When he feels betrayed — and by the powerful Ford Motor Company with its deep pockets (in those days anyway) to keep a bank of legal eagles working overtime to defeat Kearns and his dream — he hunkers down in attack mode, much to the consternation and frustration of his wife and children. “This is about right and wrong,” he insists, certain that Ford had stolen his idea from a prototype he had let them borrow.

Marc Abraham, in his directing debut, has given Flash of Genius a surprising measure of suspense, overlaid with paranoia. At one point Kearns becomes so antsy that he runs away from home to plead his case at the White House, only to wind up in a Maryland mental institution. There, a psychiatrist tries to relieve Kearns of his obsession which, at one point, had him sneaking under the hood of a Ford executive’s car to steal the intermittent wiper machinery so he could compare it to his own invention.

A nervous breakdown. Skulking around in the night. Petty thievery that leaves Kearns awash in guilt. A harrowing courtroom drama that has Kearns valiantly trying to be his own attorney. Abraham keeps upping the ante on Flash of Genius until one is engrossed in the drama as Kearns remains true to himself, even as the world he loves falls apart around him. Kinnear finds not only the passion of the man, but his self-assurance that gives him the leap from loony to hero.

And yet — and this might prevent a big audience turnout for Flash of Genius even more than telling someone it’s a story about windshield wipers — this is a bittersweet tale that has not only elevating grandstanding moments, but also moments of heartbreak.

Besides Kinnear’s shattering performance, there’s strong work by Lauren Graham (of TV’s The Gilmore Girls) as Kearns’s patient wife who eventually finds herself at the end of her rope, Alan Alda as a go-getter lawyer hired by Kearns, Mitch Pileggi as the Ford exec who pulls the rug out from under Kearns and Dermot Mulroney as a well-connected friend who tries to smooth things over, but not very well.

****Flash of Genius

Starring: Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham, Dermot Mulroney, Alan Alda.

Rated: PG-13, contains adult themes, profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com