The film presents Thomas Edison (MacLachlan) and Nikola Tesla (Ethan Hawke) in a manner reminiscent of Mozart and Salieri, if those characters had been portrayed as they are here – though Tesla’s grasp on reality seems just as shaky as Amadeus’s, without any of the qualities that make Milos Forman's film otherwise successful. This movie seems to take a perverse delight in contrasting the two inventors, highlighting Edison's shortcomings while downplaying Tesla's accomplishments—whatever those may have been. I must admit, after watching it, I couldn't tell you what Tesla achieved beyond alternating current (which he didn’t invent) and, apparently, communicating with Mars. It’s possible that last claim is why Hawke portrays Tesla as something of an otherworldly figure; a blend of Keanu Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood Still and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Tesla shows us two meetings between the inventors, only to then acknowledge that these encounters never actually occurred. During one of those fabricated scenes, Edison offers an apology to Tesla and admits he was mistaken about him. What’s the purpose of this? If it's meant as a sort of belated insult directed at Edison, I suspect he’s long since moved past caring. Beyond its historically revisionist agenda, Tesla is a stylistic mess. The film has Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), daughter of American financier and banker J.P. Morgan (Donnie Keshawarz), serving as narrator. In addition to her involvement in the story, Anne appears in brief segments where she’s sitting at a table with a Mac computer (?), reporting the number of Google search results for Tesla and Edison, and instructing us to look up George Westinghouse online. If that weren't odd enough, director/screenwriter Michael Almereyda has Hawke standing against backdrops that are either painted scenery (Niagara Falls, a field in Colorado, a restaurant) or projected images (a pair of horses playing in a meadow, to which Hawke offers an apple). This approach might work onstage, or if the entire film maintained a consistent visual style, but here it’s just another baffling artistic decision. However, all of that pales in comparison to what will likely be remembered as a low point in cinema for 2020: Ethan Hawke performing a karaoke version of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" as Nikola Tesla. That was the moment, with roughly ten minutes remaining, when I decided “Forget this movie” and didn’t regret it.

Source on TMDB