Ford v. Ferrari Review

How's this for an incredibly late review? "Ford v. Ferrari" was a movie that come out a month ago, back in the second weekend of November, before the likes of "Frozen 2" and "Knives Out," two movies that I ended up seeing and reviewing before this movie. Believe it or not, I actually was excited for this movie. My exact reasoning for not seeing it opening weekend, though, was that I figured it was a movie that was going to play well throughout the holiday season, whereas "Charlie's Angels," which was released on that same weekend, was going to be a movie that was gone from theaters in a few weeks due to lack of interest, so I figured getting that review out was a higher priority. From then on, it just became a scheduling thing. I kept putting it off and I kept seeing other movies or doing other things with my life. There was even one instance where I walked outside to go to my car to go see it, but it was so cold and frozen outside that I walked back into my apartment where it was warm. But here we finally are. The movie has been seen by me and I finally am sitting down to review it. It's a Christmas miracle! And yeah, like I predicted earlier, this is a movie that's still playing quite well, so I don't believe my window of opportunity has passed just yet.

"Ford v. Ferrari" is a movie that has almost nothing to do with Ferrari. In fact, for most of it, "Ford v. Ford" would've been a more accurate title. And when they finally get into the race, it's like "Ford v. Ford v. Ferrari v. Ferrari v. Ferrari." It's just that we in America are too dumb to know what Le Mans is or what the significance of Le Mans '66 was. So if we called it "Le Mans '66" here, there's a good possibility that a lot of people would skip it because they have no idea what that is. But throw out two big car companies in the title and promise a big race between the two of them and people swarm the theaters. Because we do like our cars here in America. I bring that all up because in many countries over in Europe, "Le Mans '66" is the actual title of this movie and it's a title that makes a lot more sense because it's the movie about that race and the events leading up to it. In past years, Ferrari has dominated that race, which is a 24-hour race over in France, but the people at Ford design a super fancy car that they think has a shot at winning. Said car is the Ford GT40 and legendary car designer Carroll Shelby is all gung-ho about this, and he's working hard with his British driver Ken Miles to make this all happen, despite a lot of push back from the corporate bullies in charge of Ford. 

All of that inner conflict at Ford was actually quite interesting. I thought I was getting myself into a movie about a car company trying to make the best car possible and race against the other car company. And I did get that to a certain degree. But a large part of the movie ended up being a movie about the two small voices trying to fight against the big corporation. The people at Ford wanted them to submit and do what's best for the company as a whole, which is not necessarily a bad thing in concept. It's just the way they went about it was fairly heartless. There's a right way to steer your employees in a proper direction and that involves showing respect for each individual employee, which is not how Ford was going about things. They just wanted to treat everyone like robots and force them to meet their demands, which is why I was rooting for Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles to stick their ground. It became a very empowering journey. One that taught that if you stick to your guns, you can make a difference. If all you do in life is ride the waves of what everyone else is doing or what everyone is telling you to do, you're just going to disappear into the crowd. But if you stick up for what you believe in, eventually people are going to notice.

As wonderful and inspiring as all that was, I will admit that if you ask me to get into specifics regarding the plot instead of making general statements saying how wonderful it was seeing the little guys stand up to the giant corporation, I'm not really going to remember a whole lot. I could attempt to sound all smart and say I just don't want to tell you because I don't want to spoil the specifics about the plot so that you can experience it all for yourself. But if I'm being honest, I simply don't remember a whole about all the details of what was happening and it was only a few days ago when I watched this. And I bring that up to illustrate a point in this movie that this story gets really long. The movie as a whole is 152 minutes and it did not need to be that long. I'm certainly not against the idea of a long movie. But if you're going to chose to be that long, you need to have effective pacing so that the movie flows well. And the first two-thirds of this movie got boring. I don't want to be the type of person to tell a movie to jump over all the character stuff so we can get the fun racing sequences. I mean, I didn't walk into this movie hoping for a Fast and Furious movie. I expected the Oscar drama stuff to be a heavy part of this. But there came a point where I just lost my patience.

Luckily there was a lot of great acting that helped push the movie forward when the plot itself dragged. Carrying the load was Matt Damon and Christian Bale as Shelby and Miles. Those two are always a joy to watch. I'm not sure if they've ever been in a movie together, but they played off each other really well. Matt Damon played Carroll Shelby and he provided the right amount of passion and energy to the role. Given that this guy was one of the most legendary sports car designers, this role required someone to have the right personality. I had to be convinced that this character had the ability to make a difference. Matt Damon was perfect. The thing that makes Matt Damon a respectable actor is that he always puts 100 percent into whatever he does and it shows on camera. Whether he's jumping into his Jason Bourne role or if he's doing something more dramatic like in "The Martian" or "Ford v. Ferrari," I can always tell that he's fully invested. It never looks like he's there for a paycheck. Because of that, he was the perfect anchor for this film. He was able to successfully push back against Ford and their corporate demands while also getting Ken Miles to invest in what they were doing, which was important given that Ken Miles was the driver.

Speaking of Ken Miles, Christian Bale had a lot of fun playing him. I don't know if this was necessarily one of his Oscar-worthy performances, although admittedly he has been nominated for lesser roles. But I didn't think that mattered. He provided a good balance to Matt Damon's Shelby as the cool and collected driver who was obviously great at what he did. And he did have a solid arc to him with in regards to his relationship with his wife and son. This is nothing unique and original for a movie like this. Typical thing where wife is not sure if she wants her husband invest in something this time consuming or dangerous and husband tries to convince her to let him. Granted, husband also doesn't know if he wants to do this huge race with all the preparation that goes with it, but once Shelby convinces him to go for it, he also has to convince his wife to let him on board. Yes, you know where all of this is going. But there was still a strong execution here thanks to these great performances and solid direction from James Mangold. With Bale's performance, he did a good job of balancing the drama and the humor. And it was also a role that reminded me that in real life he's actually British. I'm so used to his American accent that I forget that's not his natural voice.

In addition to Matt Damon and Christian Bale, this movie also had a solid supporting cast holding them up. I'm not going to spend a paragraph on each of them, but we had Tracy Letts acting sufficiently despicable as Henry Ford II with his croonies played by Josh Lucas and Jon Bernthal adding to the fire, really making the people at Ford look terrible, which made it all that more rewarding when Damon and Bale succeeded in overpowering them. And of course I can't forget Caitriona Balfe and Noah Jupe as Bale's wife and kid in the movie. Without that family dynamic in the movie, this really doesn't work. And even though all of this drags on way too long, there's enough of a solid foundation here that makes this a really rewarding experience when we get to the big race, which is where this movie shines. The racing sequences in this movie put other racing movies to shame. And even though I've never been a fan of watching real life Nascar stuff, racing games and racing movies have always been my thing. The Need for Speed franchise is one of my favorite gaming franchises and I've always loved the Fast and Furious movies. So yeah, I think it should mean something when I say the racing sequences in this movie take the cake when compared to the others.

Unfortunately, though, that's where I have to slam on the breaks when it comes to this review. Even though the last act is the best part of the movie and it's not like said last act is any sort of surprise given that Le Mans '66 is the whole point of this thing, it is nevertheless the last act of the movie and I need to tread lightly, so I'm just going to end this review in that vague sort of way. It was intense and exciting. Modern-day Nascar is quite safe, but that wasn't quite the same back in the 60's, so when they're driving 200 miles per hour and the movie suggests that they're pushing the car to the limits, I was genuinely intense and I had no idea how things turned out here. Given that this is a sports movie and there's only a small amount of options that the genre has available to offer, it was impossible for this movie to surprise me, especially since I've seen every possible sports ending done a hundred times each. But nevertheless, I found myself quite satisfied. The movie does have a bit of a fourth act to it that continues quite a bit longer after you think it's going to end and I have mixed feelings there. And as I've detailed, the first two-thirds of this movie drags on quite a bit at times, but overall this was still a very enjoyable time at the theaters and thus I'm giving "Ford v. Ferrari" an 8/10.