Review: Ford v Ferrari restores Le Mans lore

By Katherine Monk

You can hear the chorus “USA! USA!” swelling in your subconscious once you read the title for James Mangold’s latest reel, Ford v Ferrari. After all, it’s not called Ferrari Contro Ford. Nosireeee. This is a movie about who comes first, and in this big Hollywood movie with big Hollywood stars, we already know the answer.

It’s all history. You can read about the great racing rivalry between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari in books, magazines and countless blog posts. But for those who don’t know about the glorious lore of Le Mans, it all starts in the early ‘60s, with a desire for the Ford Motor Company to rebuild its racing program in order to give the brand a sexier image. Henry “The Deuce” Ford decides to buy his way in by purchasing cash-strapped Ferrari outright, but Enzo walks — literally — at the last minute, flushing “The Deuce’s” dreams down the loo and igniting an odious cloud of ego into a full-blown feud.

Mangold takes us into a beautifully recreated room in Ferrari’s courtyard offices in Maranello, Italy on that fateful day in May, 1963. Actor and playwright Tracy Letts (Ladybird) dons the broad-shouldered bravado of American industry as Ford, while Italian stage veteran Remo Girone does some single-needle work in his role as Enzo Ferrari, tailoring his suit to make it all feel personal.

It’s a great scene, not just because the two actors are so great at reacting to one another without saying a word, but because it puts everything else into this surreal, impractical, and altogether narcissistic context.

Mangold finds the humour in the moment, allowing the snub to linger, but once he gets the whole vehicle into gear and puts the real drivers of this story behind the wheel, we feel the grind of gravitas because this is more about drivers Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale) than it is about the famed Le Mans race of 1966.

In order to carry out his dream of beating Ferrari to the checkered flag, Ford recognized he needed some expert help. Miles and Shelby ended up onboard, giving birth the Ford GT40, but not before several mechanical and emotional blowouts threatened the car, their relationship, and their lives.

Mangold finds the humour in the moment, allowing the snub to linger, but once he gets the whole vehicle into gear and puts the real drivers of this story behind the wheel, we feel the grind of gravitas because this is more about drivers Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale) than it is about the famed Le Mans race of 1966.

Mangold uses their bond as the dramatic engine, and with two thespian pistons like Bale and Damon, you get a turbo-diesel under the hood: a dependable, constant chug of power that doesn’t need spark plugs. Once the block is warm, they just keep combusting.

The magic in the machine is trust. Though both actors walk into their respective roles with enough hardware and hero role experience to easily win our trust as viewers, they also find trust in each other as fellow A-list actors sharing the lead billing, and convince us of a profound connection between two men.

It’s a love story that bears all the marks of Brokeback Mountain, only without the sexual stuff. These guys were straight, but they understood each other in a way no one else could. They were both drivers who pushed the limits of their cars. They were both creative thinkers when it came to design and engineering, and they both understood what it felt like to face death on a daily basis. Somehow, they need each other to feel meaningful in the world, and the two actors make us believe in this friendship by constantly playing it down.

Mangold uses their bond as the dramatic engine, and with two thespian pistons like Bale and Damon, you get a turbo-diesel under the hood: a dependable, constant chug of power that doesn’t need spark plugs. Once the block is warm, they just keep combusting.

They fight, they disagree, they break up. Yet, every time one of them makes a move away from the other, we can feel how much less they become. Their chemistry is manifested in the car itself, and to make a well-oiled machine, you have to work like one.

Bale plays Miles with a volatile mix of brash British tank commander and emotional introvert, generating sympathy by contradicting playboy stereotype and being a solid and dedicated family man with a love for mechanics as well as an incurable daredevil streak. Damon is the oxygen that lets him burn, offering an airier screen presence as the iconic Shelby, but one that saturates every frame with a deep breath of optimism — an intangible belief that everything will turn out just fine because he’s there, looking so strong and unfazed at every impossible moment.

When all that potential hits the track, Mangold puts us in the cockpit, and hits the gas. Using analog, in-camera, techniques to capture all the rubber-burning action, he makes sure we don’t get hypnotized by high-definition simulations. We get gritty, sometimes jittery, images of now-vintage race cars travelling on a replica of the old Le Mans course in France.

The painstaking detail in the art direction pays off, because even when we aren’t watching big action sequences, we’re drinking in the set dec, from those offices at Ferrari, to the Ford boardrooms in Detroit — it’s like getting a twin hit of Mad Men and a 1960s Steve McQueen movie.

The only real drag is the overall design of Ford v Ferrari. It’s clunky, boxy and completely generic: A testament to Hollywood formula and an assembly line approach. The only reason it succeeds is that super-charged twin engine of Bale and Damon, alternately purring under the hood or punching it out on the figure-eight.

@katherinemonk

To read more movie reviews by Katherine Monk, check out the Ex-Press archive or sample career work at Rotten Tomatoes.

THE EX-PRESS, November 15, 2019

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