Review: Ford v Ferrari

Set in the 1960s, the real-life rivalry between car manufacturing mogul Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) and Enzo Ferrari, as Ford executive Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) comes up with the idea of Ford building a race car to enter the Le Mans. Enter former Le Mans winner Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) who is tasked with building the car. He brings along his usual crew (including Ray McKinnon), but insists on bringing in Brit driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) to not only consult but ultimately be lead driver. Miles is known for being tempestuous, ‘difficult’, and the antithesis of a ‘team player’, which doesn’t impress gutless Ford executive Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas), but Shelby is unwavering in his support of Miles, as he believes he is Ford’s only chance of winning the big one.

 

I’m not a car guy in the slightest, I find Christian Bale a bit hit-and-miss, but I normally like Matt Damon and eclectic director James Mangold (“Cop Land”, “Walk the Line”, “3:10 to Yuma”, “Identity”, “Logan”). So I figured I’d give this 2019 based-on-a-true-story flick. Scripted by Jez & John-Henry Butterworth (“Fair Game”, “Edge of Tomorrow”) and Jason Keller (“Machine Gun Preacher”, “Escape Plan”), it turns out that the very best thing here is Bale’s solid performance. Go figure. Normally, when race cars go vroom, Ryan goes ZZZZzzzz. Not here actually. I probably prefer “Rush” overall as a film, but this is certainly better than “Days of Thunder”. The racing footage itself is actually incredible, showing how unbelievably dangerous the motorsport is. It’s rather exciting, hair-raising stuff, probably the best competitive car racing footage in a fictional film that I’ve seen.

 

Christian Bale is pretty damn perfectly cast as the likeable and well-meaning, but supposedly ‘difficult’ and incredibly stubborn Ken Miles. I had a little more difficulty in accepting Matt Damon, however. I normally really like him as an actor, but whatever voice/accent he was going for, I think someone Matthew McConaughey would’ve nailed in his sleep without losing much from an acting ability perspective, either. Damon is OK in the part, but I couldn’t help shaking the idea that McConaughey or Josh Brolin probably should’ve been playing the part. As for the story, well it’s certainly an irresistible one in theory at least, even for non-petrol heads. However, as told here it’s a bit too slow to start, and the screenwriters don’t successfully juggle all of these characters, I’m afraid. That brings me back to Damon, or more specifically his character. 45 minutes is far too long for Damon’s character to be just now making his decision to build a race car. It should’ve taken the film 25 minutes maximum, surely. To be perfectly honest, I feel like the character Damon plays is a lot less important to the story than Mangold and the screenwriters think it is. It’s like they’ve beefed the role up simply because they’ve got a star to play it. The funny thing is the character isn’t terribly interesting and still doesn’t feel fully fleshed-out anyway, at the expense of other characters who are even less fleshed-out. Look at the characters played by Jon Bernthal and Josh Lucas (why in the hell did he never break out as a star? It’s completely maddening to me). Bernthal is quite good but after getting quite a bit of focus in the first half of the film, he seems to take a back seat to Lucas’ more antagonistic character, who was pretty much taking the back seat in the first half of the film. Thus neither character ends up fully utilised. It’s a sloppy and awkward transition. I wasn’t overly fussed with Tracy Letts as Henry Ford II, but the character does feature in the film’s funniest scene as Damon’s character takes the mogul for a drive. A very, very fast drive.

 

A bit slow and overlong, this racing drama nonetheless comes through in the end. Christian Bale is terrific, and the racing scenes are top-notch. The script is a mixed bag, but the real-life tale itself is too irresistible to fail to entertain.

 

Rating: B-