As I mentioned in my review for F1: The Movie, I am not a car guy. I don’t watch racing events, I don’t go crazy over NASCAR, and I don’t care much about the latest technology in the automotive racing industry. I find the sport boring and cannot understand those who can sit in front of the television and watch something like Le Mans and get excited about watching drivers doing laps for a full twenty-four hours straight.
But that doesn’t mean a film about the subject couldn’t hold my interest. If done right, films can make nearly any subject interesting to watch. You don’t have to like baseball in order to enjoy a film like Field of Dreams or Major League. Love and Basketball doesn’t require you to be all in on the sport to appreciate the film. I can enjoy a film like F1: The Movie or Days of Thunder while having no interest whatsoever in the sport of driving, too. It’s all in the way it is presented on film that makes the difference.
James Mangold seems like the perfect fit for this kind of film. He has a style about his films that often blends exciting action set-pieces with good, solid character development in a way that we care about them, even if the film itself is not the best. This doesn’t always work out, and when he does have misses, they tend to be because he took big swings rather than playing things safe. This can be seen in his Fox/Marvel movies—his Wolverine films saved that franchise from the dismal state it was in at the time—as well as his take on Indiana Jones, a film that made some bold choices but failed to find an audience.
Ford v Ferrari was his take on the biopic genre, a look at a historical event that many outside of the racing devotees wouldn’t know anything about. This would be his second of three biopics to date and the strongest of the three, primarily because it sits firmly on the backs of two very good leading actors, both giving award-worthy performances, though neither broke through into the Academy Awards. Their on-screen chemistry carries this film whenever it threatens to fall into genre clichés and both add levity to the film when it could have easily played things more straightforwardly.
The film is looking at a specific time in the history of the Ford Motor Company when Vice President Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) proposes to CEO Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) that they can boost their car sales by purchasing Ferrari, dominant in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. But owner Enzo Ferrari uses Ford’s offer to secure a deal with Fiat that allows him to retain ownership of the firm’s racing team, Scuderia Ferrari, insulting Ford and his whole company in the bargain. Upset by the slight, Ford orders his racing division to build a car to compete against Ferrari at Le Mans. Iacocca hires Shelby American owner Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), a retired driver who won Le Mans in 1959, to build the car. Shelby enlists his friend Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a hot-tempered English racing driver and mechanical engineer, to help make it happen.
Problems arise though when Miles gives a rude but accurate appraisal of the new Ford Mustang to Ford senior vice president Leo Beebe. Beebe campaigns against Miles being the driver and face of the new Ford GT40 Mk I prototype, calling him a public relations liability and forces Shelby to exclude him from Le Mans. When none of the Fords finish the race, Shelby uses this as leverage to get Miles reinstated and to point out to Henry Ford II that, despite not winning the race, what they accomplished has shown Ferrari that they mean business and have come to compete.
Over the course of the next year, modifications have been made to the GT40, focusing on the issues that plagued the car in the last race. After a fiery crash that Miles barely walks away from, it is discovered that the Le Mans rule book does not prohibit replacing the whole brake assembly during the actual race, something that will solve the recurrent problem of brake fade. Beebe, still trying to sideline Miles and newly placed in charge of the Ford Racing Division, tries to sabotage his chances at Daytona International Speedway, knowing that if Miles loses this race he will not be driving at Le Mans. Miles wins anyway. All of this leads up to the Le Mans race, a grueling 24-hour race where the winner is whomever travels the most distance within that 24-hour window.
Building a race car is a highly technological feat that requires a great deal of understanding about engines, speed, tires, aerodynamics, and everything in between. This can be handled on-screen in a number of ways, but the two most common would be utilizing a lot of techo-babble or simplifying it down to a few key areas and basically ignoring the rest. Obviously, the second option is the better of the two. The former might appeal to gearheads who live and breathe auto mechanics, but that is a narrow audience. There are documentaries out there that break this kind of thing down in nauseating detail for those interested in that. For the purpose of this movie, we get just a few things that are focused on. The big ones are the aerodynamics of the car, illustrated by a sequence where Miles tapes some string all over the car while the engineers watch things through their binoculars to see where they are missing some serious drag and lift. We also get a scene where the brakes burn out, leading to a crash. Miles almost loses his life in that crash, a foreshadowing of where things are headed in the end.
This film was Christian Bale’s follow-up to Vice, the film where he portrayed U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Bale put on a lot of weight for that role and then lost it all, plus some, to play the rail thin Ken Miles. This extreme weight loss required production on Ford v Ferrari to be delayed while Bale shed those pounds. What it also did, though, was give Bale time to learn the ins and outs of driving a race car. He spent a great deal of time learning how to maneuver that car in the months leading up to principal photography. All that time and effort can be seen on the screen as when we see him behind the wheel, it is completely convincing that he knows that vehicle inside and out. This is not an actor going through a handful of memorized motions but a person who knows how to handle the vehicle they are sitting in. That isn’t something that can be easily faked; it requires many hours of training to get it right.
Matt Damon is just as good in the role of Carroll Shelby, a man who wants to still be the one behind the wheel, but his body can no longer handle the stresses. This is a man who has been put in the spotlight by Henry Ford II, and if he cannot produce, it is his head on the chopping block. When they lose that first Le Mans and Shelby is brought before Henry Ford II, Ford doesn’t even look at him. He looks off to the side and demands: “Give me one reason why I don’t fire everyone associated with this abomination, starting with you.” You can see in Shelby’s face that he knows the next thing he says could make or break this deal, and the weight of that all is there in his eyes. But there is confidence there, too, and Matt Damon is selling all of this at the same time. He knows how to stroke Henry Ford II’s ego and turn anger and a threat into an opportunity.
Most people going into this film will not know what ultimately happens to Ken Miles. Had the film ended with the race, we could go on blissfully unaware of it, too. This film doesn’t let us get away with that, though. Truth be told, whenever I see a biopic that doesn’t cover the final fate of those involved, I’m quick to go online and look it up. I do this with actors in old films, too; it’s a form of morbid curiosity I’m cursed with. This film covers that, though, because it is an integral part of the character’s story and ties into the story being told. This is not a film, like F1: The Movie, that ends with the racers celebrating their well-earned victory. It has a different ending, one that some may wish had been left off. To do so would have been to this film’s detriment.
Ford v Ferrari is not a story that was clamoring to be told. Yet it is one that is entertaining and moving in a way that you wouldn’t expect from a story about racing. That is a testament to the skill behind the cameras and the charisma in front of them. This is movie magic of the purist sense, emotionally manipulative without coming across as such. Looking back at the 2020 Oscars, it is crazy that it wasn’t nominated for more awards than it was. Aside from the actors, Phedon Papamichael should have had one for his amazing cinematography, and James Mangold should have for his directing. I don’t like watching races, but this film is one that I could rewatch over and over again.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, and James Mangold
Best Film Editing: Michael McCusker and Andrew Buckland (won)
Best Sound Editing: Donald Sylvester (won)
Best Sound Mixing: Paul Massey, David Giammarco, and Steven A. Morrow
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Release Date: November 15, 2019
Running Time: 152 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Caitríona Balfe, Tracy Letts, and Josh Lucas
Directed by: James Mangold
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