FORD vs FERRARI: LE MANS 66 (2019)
REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER
James Mangold's FORD VS FERRARI: LE MANS 66 is thrilling and moving, and not just about the race between two top motor companies to win Le Mans but also the battle on-screen between two acting styles... Matt Damon vs Christian Bale.
Bale is all surface feeling, approaching the grotesque in his portrayal of driver Ken Miles, a Birmingham-born ex-world-war-two tank driver, who finds himself in the US with a penchant for fixing cars, and for racing.
Damon is laid-back as Carroll Shelby, a quiet Texan, who trained pilots in the Air Corps in the Second World War. Shelby loved to drive, broke several speed records and became an eight-times Formula One winning champion.
Bale's Miles is blustery and provocative; Damon's Shelby is impassioned and wily. The portrayals present an interesting cultural flip: the Brit with his feelings out front and the American with his feelings hidden.
The two men get to team-up and fight with each other and the suits in their bid to turn the family brand Ford into an aspirational supercar company that will take on and beat the far sexier Ferrari brand at Le Mans.
The screenplay was written by the Brit playwright / screenwriter brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, responsible for plays such as JERUSALEM and MOJO, and films such as Nicole Kidman's BIRTHDAY GIRL (recommended).
Mangold directs the racing scenes beautifully. When you watch a squadron of X-wings skimming over the surface of another planet's lake, you can enjoy the VFX for what it is but you always know it is a VFX shot. When you are watching cars race around the track at breakneck speeds and the VFX work dovetails seamlessly with the driving of the practical cars, there is less belief to be suspended and a more tangible purchase on the dangers of the sport. It's exciting. More so, because you care about the people inside and what's at stake.
There's some solid support from Jon Bernthal as Lee Iacocca, whose role sadly diminishes as the races start, and from Bale's old colleague at Pierce & Pierce, Josh Lucas, responsible for marketing at Ford.
It's Ford's marketing department that is positioned as the real enemy in the film because the marketing of the cars is also a point of narrative interest. Mangold and his writers explore the boundaries and links between what the company desires (to be the fastest and coolest) and what it needs (to sell cars to ordinary folks). In this respect - art vs commerce - the film-makers and studio find something in common with the characters.
There's a touch of "Wikipedia movie" about it when fact-chaining sometimes overtakes the story's dramatic imperative but, even so, FORD VS FERRARI is thrilling, exhilarating and, ultimately, moving in its portrayal of two men who came together to take on a speeding giant. I left the cinema exhausted and with tears in my eyes.
You must decide who wins the film's internal battle but, for me, it was Matt Damon.