James Mangold's “FORD V FERRARI”
Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald
I know very little about auto racing but there is little doubt in my mind that FORD V FERRARI stretches the truth quite a bit.
The outline is true. In the 1960’s Ford made a successful bid to dethrone Ferrari as the king of the Le Mans 24 hour car race. The movie tells the story by focusing on the efforts of race car manufacturer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driver/mechanic Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Much of the drama portrayed is based on the tension between their giant funder Ford and the more independently minded Shelby and Miles.
The resulting movie is high quality popcorn entertainment reminiscent of the Hollywoodized sports biopics of the 40’s and 50’s. What propels this movie way beyond that is a combination of the Damon/Bale team and extremely high production values.
Damon and Bale’s characters’ simultaneously clashing and complementary personalities is consistently entertaining and ranges from sentimentality to tension to terror to playfulness. They really do inhabit their roles.
Production wise I could not tell what was real and what was CGI. This is true not only for the breathtakingly edited racing scenes but also for normal 1960’s street scenes. Also standouts are the soundtrack and overall sound design. Not only is it a good idea to see this movie on the big screen just for the action but to make sure the theater has a good sound system. The loud engine sounds and pulsating music of the race scenes cannot help but get your blood pumping.
At the end of the day, though, this is a movie that focuses on the characters and their trials and tribulations. It succeeds admirably.
Review copyright (c) 2019 by Dennis D. McDonald
