Ford v Ferrari (2019)
Directed by James Mangold
American car designer Carroll Shelby and the British-born driver Ken Miles work together to battle corporate interference, the laws of physics, and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company and take on the dominating race cars of Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.
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Its structure and sentiment is familiar from movies from “The Right Stuff” and “Seabiscuit” to “The Fighter” and “First Man,” hitting all the right notes as a maverick-versus the-corporate-suits movie.
Telling the story of the 1966 Le Mans auto race, a 24-hour ordeal that pitted underdog Ford against perennial champion Ferrari, director James Mangold draws out his two-and-half hour runtime in what could have been The Right Stuff of car racing.
Like Tucker: The Man and His Dream or The Right Stuff , Ford v Ferrari is an acutely observant examination of the holes that an obsession with the envelope, the edge, the very line of what’s possible can leave and the ones it can fill.
Car movies need more than visceral excitement, and although Ford v Ferrari features the pride of production, national representation, and performance (through the hierarchy of owners and risk-taking performers), it never quite grasps the aspirational aspect of American adventure that distinguished The Right Stuff or Tucker: A Man and His Dream (although the scene where Henry Ford II lifts off in a private helicopter at a crucial moment in the race says something real about how obligation meets privilege).
Given the era, there are echoes of "The Right Stuff" in these hard men -- speed junkies, risking all in their '60s-era machines -- with Damon as a glib good ol' boy and Bale as a working stiff with a Dickensian accent who, it's noted, fought his way across Europe during World War II.
Like the Chuck Yeager character in The Right Stuff, he’s married to a good woman (Caitriona Balfe) who understands his passion for cars and gives him the space he needs.
“Grand Prix” (1966), starring James Garner, is clearly an important influence; the photography allows the audience to be inside the tight quarters of the race cars as they fly along the open track.
Not that the running time is a problem per se; the great 1966 racing masterpiece Grand Prix is longer still.
Not since John Frankenheimer revved up his engines to bring 1966’s Grand Prix to life have I watched a motion picture that made me feel as if I was sitting in the seat right next to the driver.
With its old-fashioned dramatic approach, the insertion of numerous dead weight scenes involving Miles and his wife (Catriona Balfe) and young son (Noah Jupe) and an insistence on dragging things out to over 2 1/2 hours of screen time, this is the kind of film that could have been produced back in the day alongside such racing epics as “Grand Prix” (1966) and the Steve McQueen vehicle “Le Mans” (1971) with nary a change.
Damon and Bale are as solid as foundation as you can build a film on (the two have a mid-film scrap that’s essentially the “I tea-bagged your fucking drum set!” fight from Step Brothers put in the middle of Grand Prix ), and it’s actually quite nice to see the latter actor, famous for his brusqueness, work on a project that spotlights his warmth.
The interior compositions are sedate and classical, and when the film hits the track the disciplined camera coverage and superb editing recall such racing movie classics as John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966, with James Garner), Le Mans (1971 with Steve McQueen) and Winning (1969 with Paul Newman).
He teams up with his friend, savant driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale, finally getting to show off his versatile British accent) and the Ford Motor Company to take on Ferrari in the famous 24-hour long Le Mans race in France.
Newman starred in 1969's Winning (about the Indianapolis 500), and McQueen did 1971's Le Mans (about the famous 24-hour French race).
Cinematically, Mangold ( Logan ) covers much of the same visual and narrative territory of those from era it is depicting – it’s a talky, thoughtful companion piece to Steve McQueen’s 1971 pet project directed by Lee H. Katzin, Le Mans, augmented by Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography and some remarkably invisible CGI.
With its old-fashioned dramatic approach, the insertion of numerous dead weight scenes involving Miles and his wife (Catriona Balfe) and young son (Noah Jupe) and an insistence on dragging things out to over 2 1/2 hours of screen time, this is the kind of film that could have been produced back in the day alongside such racing epics as “Grand Prix” (1966) and the Steve McQueen vehicle “Le Mans” (1971) with nary a change.
Newman starred in 1969's Winning (about the Indianapolis 500), and McQueen did 1971's Le Mans (about the famous 24-hour French race).
The interior compositions are sedate and classical, and when the film hits the track the disciplined camera coverage and superb editing recall such racing movie classics as John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966, with James Garner), Le Mans (1971 with Steve McQueen) and Winning (1969 with Paul Newman).
Decades ago, we saw James Caan in “Red Line 7000” (1965), James Garner in “Grand Prix” (1966), Paul Newman in “Winning” (1969), Steve McQueen in “Le Mans” (1971) and Burt Reynolds in “The Cannonball Run” (1981).
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While it’s instinctive to compare “Ford v Ferrari” to the likes of “Le Mans” or (the far superior) “Rush,” shades of “Apollo 13” and “Rocky” (especially “Rocky IV” with the over-pronounced national pride in Mangold’s movie) seem more visible here, with a story that sees family and father-son dynamics of equal importance as the eventual outcome of the race.
And it is a sports movie, despite not really being ABOUT racing, just as something like “Rocky” is a sports movie despite not really being ABOUT boxing.
It’s one of those endings like “Rocky” (1976) where you’re initially rooting for the win-lose outcome, but it’s so well-crafted that you ultimately don’t care as long as the hero experiences personal growth.
Which is saying something since the climax at Le Mans is just as intense as a Rocky movie.
Le Mans ’66 doesn’t do anything particularly revolutionary: it hews to a classic sports-movie structure that’s been tried and tested in everything from Rocky to Hoosiers , while the single major female character, Miles’ wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe), doesn’t get much to do except occasionally gripe about his workload.
He is the Howard Hawks of his era, but even Hawks and his one racing film, Red Line 7000, couldn’t match up to the level of skill Mangold pours into Ford v Ferrari.
Decades ago, we saw James Caan in “Red Line 7000” (1965), James Garner in “Grand Prix” (1966), Paul Newman in “Winning” (1969), Steve McQueen in “Le Mans” (1971) and Burt Reynolds in “The Cannonball Run” (1981).
Having caught on fire in a scene that recalls Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, Shelby has been stripped of his driving career.
It also inevitably begs comparison to everything from Days of Thunder to Talladega Nights to, um, Stroker Ace to, uh, The Love Bug and, sure why not, Cars and The Cannonball Run and Death Race 2000 .
Just before the lights dimmed on the latest feature from Logan mastermind James Mangold, my partner whispered to me, “This better not be real-life Talladega Nights !”
But over the last 30 years we’ve only seen Tom Cruise in “Days of Thunder” (1990), Vin Diesel in “The Fast and the Furious” (2001), Will Ferrell in “Talladega Nights” (2006) and Chris Hemsworth in “Rush” (2013).
It’s understandable considering the subject matter is motor-racing, which outside of the comedic Talladega Nights hasn’t really achieved podium finishes at the box-office, with Rush and Driven both sent to the scrap pile.
The last movie that impressed me in this sense was Rush in 2013—Ford v Ferrari is different in how it shows that but it also does a great job of putting you right on the track.
The hope shared by 20th Century Fox; its corporate overlord, Disney; director James Mangold (“Walk the Line,” “Logan”); and others connected to this unfashionable $100 million picture rests on the movie finding a larger audience than a full range of recent racing-themed commercial disappointments, from “Speed Racer” to “Rush.”
Not since Rush have I felt such an adrenaline rush at witnessing car races.
Genre-wise, Ford v Ferrari is really a space picture like The Martian or Apollo 13, having more in common with those team-based efforts at an engineering goal than it does a true racing movie like Rush (one of the most overlooked movies of the decade, but I am biased there, maybe).
Put all of Hollywood’s classic racing dramas on the track, including Grand Prix, Le Mans, Days of Thunder and Rush, and they all come up short of the checkered flag against James Mangold’s smashing Ford v Ferrari, a truly exciting movie in the genre that never forgets it isn’t as much about as the cars as it is about the human beings driving them.
But this is much closer in spirit and tone to Rush than it is to, say, the Fast and Furious flicks.
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It also inevitably begs comparison to everything from Days of Thunder to Talladega Nights to, um, Stroker Ace to, uh, The Love Bug and, sure why not, Cars and The Cannonball Run and Death Race 2000 .
Decades ago, we saw James Caan in “Red Line 7000” (1965), James Garner in “Grand Prix” (1966), Paul Newman in “Winning” (1969), Steve McQueen in “Le Mans” (1971) and Burt Reynolds in “The Cannonball Run” (1981).
Balfe gets the short end of the stick, and like Claire Foy in First Man , shows there’s real talent for someone to pull from.
Its structure and sentiment is familiar from movies from “The Right Stuff” and “Seabiscuit” to “The Fighter” and “First Man,” hitting all the right notes as a maverick-versus the-corporate-suits movie.
Instead, the filmmaker – his directorial style is perhaps the most assured here – locates the bruises that propel men to declare war and mistake it for glory, lending it a wistful, reflective gaze that is reminiscent of both, First Man and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Their effort to build a Le Mans-winning racecar for Ford is an engineering challenge similar in ambition to the Apollo program commemorated in Damien Chazelle’s “First Man,” though smaller in scale.
Ford v Ferrari does not have the insight or empathy of First Man , it just assumes these Men do their particular Men Things because they are the Men who do those Men Things.
The interior shots are nothing but claustrophobic, not unlike the coffin-like spaces in last year's moon landing drama First Man .