Movie Breakdown: Ford V Ferrari (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Everything about this film – the period, the stars, the presence of many many fast cars hurtling around racetracks – has me excited. Which, based on my general cynicism about hope, makes me worried.
Post-Screening Ramble:
I know almost nothing about cars aside from the very basics – four wheels, two pedals (three if you’re piloting a manual), one makes you stop, one makes you go. That said, movies about cars ripping down tracks at unbelievable speeds really get me going. Ford v Ferrari is a film that has a lot of cars hurtling down open stretches of road, all captured by James Mangold’s textured vision of 1960s racing. It is, almost uniformly, a very entertaining film. And not just because I like cars that go fast going fast on a big screen, Mangold has also done a fine job of wrangling two of the biggest “blue-collar” stars in Hollywood – Matt Damon and Christian Bale – to play two of the great innovators of the racing world – Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles. As the story goes, at least on screen, Shelby was a onetime Le Mans (the big 24-hour French race) champion whose sick heart pushed him into car building and car sales. When Ford, the company and the person, asked him to build a vehicle that would beat Enzo Ferrari in the ’66 Le Mans, he said yes, but only if renowned troublemaker Ken Miles sat behind the wheel. Ford v Ferrari extrapolates the event and the events leading up to the event into a dissection of the egos and the fragility of two legends poised on the edge of their greatest success. Bale is, as he can almost always be counted on to be, a chameleon, a cockney Brit with a bristling exterior, a genius intellect and a soft heart for his wife (Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe) and kid (Honey Boy’s Noah Jupe). There were moments early in the film where I was convinced that if one was to sit and drink with Christian Bale, this would be the man you’d sit with, so deeply does he slip into the skin. Damon is, as Damon is, Matt Damon through and through, genial, layered, a nice guy with an attitude who’s just trying to do what’s best for everyone. The film never falters so much as it just keeps going, after a certain point, after we’ve seen the cars whip around corners and we’ve seen the cars crash and we’ve seen Damon and Bale slip by another corporate intrusion, you start thinking there could be a few edits, a few less hours of the 24-hour Le Mans. For the most part though, Ford v Ferrari is the sort of big-budget, grounded spectacle we don’t see too often in the theaters these days. No monsters (except the human kind), no superheroes, no sudden twists – just the story of two men seeking to better the world by driving cars very, very fast.
One Last Thought:
Tracy Betts, who plays Ford here, is a national treasure and should have a role in everything ever. His high octane drive with Shelby in the parking lot is the best moment of the film.
One More Last Thought:
The studios clearly believe that Le Mans is such a foreign concept to the average American that they titled this film poorly at best. This is not a movie about Ford vs Ferrari, it’s about two men versus the corporate machinations of a large, inhuman company. In other countries it’s, rightfully, called Le Mans ’66. Oh, America, just do one thing right sometimes.
