For the most part, "The Current War" gives viewers many reasons to feel ecstatic about the movie.

The director, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who has mostly directed TV episodes from "American Horror Story" and "Glee," does a wonderful job of guiding a stellar cast and building a world on the edge of advancing technology people take for granted in the modern-day.

It gives audiences just enough information to keep up but it doesn't delve deeper into the science, presumably to prevent confusion.

However, it does leave a desire for more.

"The Current War" is about Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) in the late 1800s competing over who will power the future and earn the checkbooks of leaders across America.

THE CURRENT WAR: Director's Cut | Official Trailer | 101 Studios www.youtube.com

To cope with his workaholic instincts and marital problems with his wife Mary (Tuppence Middleton), Edison has his plucky secretary Samuel Insull (Tom Holland). And serving as Edison's foil, the noble Westinghouse has his intelligent wife Marguerite (Katherine Waterston) to lean on. Meanwhile, Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) is thrown between working for Edison, creating his own company and solidifying his inventive ideas.

It's ironic that the film celebrates American characters, who are mostly played by British actors. But at least the acting is captivating, and it brings these historical inventors to life off a textbook page.

But that's just it. The film feels a bit by-the-book. The Serbian-American Tesla deserves to be in the movie a lot more because he's equally responsible for contributing to electrical advances. It's unfortunate that he's forgettable until he pops into another scene.

At least the pacing is exciting. It shines its way into the light when tension rises but recedes back into the shadows when exposition is needed, similar to the characters whose faces glow in the dark for the sake of contrasting cinematography.

It's a film about an electric war, but the film has had its own struggle behind the scenes.

In 2017, producer Harvey Weinstein was the original producer for the film. But after being accused of sexual misconduct and rape, his company delayed the first release date. Eventually, the film was sold to Lantern Entertainment and then to 101 Studios.

Throughout the drama on and off the screen, it's a movie that doesn't fizzle. But it could've done a bit more to go above expectations.