Ford v. Ferrari (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ford v. Ferrari (2019) – J. Mangold

There’s a lot of chest-thumping in Ford v. Ferrari – but what did you expect?  Matt Damon plays retired driver and race car designer/team leader Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale plays anti-social hotshot driver Ken Miles who team up to try to beat the Italians at the 1966 LeMans Grand Prix of Endurance (a 24-hour race).  I’m not into cars but nevertheless director James Mangold manages to pull all the strings to set up various tensions that keep the movie churning along:  underdog vs. Goliath, artistry vs. corporate manipulation, mano a mano.  Although Ferrari has to be beat, the real enemy here is Ford itself or at least their exec Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) who doesn’t like Miles because he doesn’t project the right image to customers.  Lee Iacocca (yes him; Jon Bernthal) is in the Shelby/Miles camp but seems to have less power to influence Henry Ford II.  There’s a lot of back and forth over whether Miles will be able to drive for Ford or not.  And then there are the racing sequences which are in fact pretty good.  As usual, Bale loses himself in his character who does a lot of muttering while driving (in a Midlands accent that requires Bale to do something funny with his upper lip). Damon is, well, Damon.  The final coda feels tacked on and maybe should have been relegated to an onscreen postscript.  Fawning reviewers suggest that the film is a return to mainstream Hollywood filmmaking of yore (uh Rocky?), but your mileage (ha, ha) will depend on how much you enjoy this genre and its formula.