Ford v Ferrari [Le Mans 66] *** (2019, Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Caitriona Balfe, Noah Jupe) – Movie Review

Matt Damon and Christian Bale do very well indeed in reliable, stalwart star turns as gifted American car designer Carroll Shelby and brilliant British driver Ken Miles, who battle to build a revolutionary racing car for the Ford Motor Company to challenge Italian reigning champions Ferrari at the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1966 in director James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari [Le Mans 66] (2019).

The movie is a good thing and often very likeable and engaging, but it is often in the slow lane, at least till it gets to the Le Mans race, which is impressively, even excitingly staged. All the stuff with Caitriona Balfe and Noah Jupe as Miles’s wife and young son is depressingly flat, dreary and conventional, just holding back the real drama in the Ford boardroom and on the race track. This helps it to run into ridiculous over-time at 152 minutes, when there is a great two-hour movie begging to get out. It is very dialogue heavy, unusually so, in the screenplay by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, also greatly increasing the running time, but most of the dialogue is good quality stuff.

It looks quality too. Fans of old cars and vintage sports cars, and Sixties atmosphere, will be in heaven. They are here in super-abundance. Acting-wise, Tracy Letts runs away with the movie in his many scenes as Henry Ford II, and Josh Lucas is not far behind in a super portrait of slimy corporate villainy as Ford’s right-hand man. Jon Bernthal is strong too as Ford guy Lee Iacocca.

The huge, and risky, $97,600,000 budget is all up there on screen with the brilliant period, car and race reconstructions. But again, they have decided to take annoying and pointless liberties with telling their true story. For example, Enzo Ferrari sold half his company to Fiat S.p.A. in 1969, not in 1963 after rejecting Ford’s buyout offer.

There is an anti-Italian vibe, so it will probably not go down too well in Italy, though Remo Girone gives an enjoyable turn as Enzo Ferrari.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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