Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ford v Ferrari’ on HBO, an Auto-Racing Flick That’s a Slick Slab of Hollywood Gold

Now streaming via HBO, Ford v Ferrari is a movie dramatizing how Ford Motor Company threw piles and piles of money into an auto-racing venture in order to engineer victory at Le Mans, and is a prime example of 20th Century Fox throwing piles and piles of money into a moviemaking venture in order to engineer victory at the box office and on Oscar night. It worked for both parties — Ford knocked Ferrari off its perennial victory perch, and the film took home $225 million, a best picture nom and wins for editing and sound — so hooray for corporations!

FORD V FERRARI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: At 7,000 rpm, racecar drivers turn into god damn poets. Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) narrates: The world falls away and your perspective widens like a new day dawning on the horizon; the engine roar becomes a serene hum; gears gear up and carburetors carburete and monkeys wrench in blissful harmony. You know, stuff like that. It’s 1959, and Shelby is driving at Le Mans, a grueling 24-hour race that’s the pinnacle of human auto-driving achievement. He accidentally catches fire during a pit stop, but smothers it and keeps on going. He wins, becoming the first American to do so, but a heart condition forces him into retirement soon after, into a life of selling cars like a total normie.

Meanwhile, in a Ford boardroom, marketing swami Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) pitches an idea at harrumphmeister Henry Ford II’s (Tracy Letts) swollen frog neck: boost flagging sales by getting into auto racing. They try to buy out Ferrari, which is financially strapped despite winning Le Mans every stinking year, but fail mightily when Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) calls Mr. Ford a bloated sack of protoplasm, or something like that. So with fire and probably 16 hamburgers in his belly, Ford calls up Shelby, hands him a blank check, and tells him to beat those (insert slurs for Italians here) at Le Mans.

The first guy Shelby visits is his old pal Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a hot-tempered British-born mechanic with a failing garage but a feel for the wheel and track like no other. Miles is cocky like the ocean is slightly damp. He’s good and he knows it, and his wife (Caitriona Balfe) and son (Noah Jupe) adore him. He starts his new corporate gig on an ostentatious note, telling Ford muckity-muck Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) that the new Mustang is “a secretary’s car.” His knowledge and skill always, always, always back up his assertions. But it doesn’t matter when smirking corporate jerkoffs are concerned — Shelby is caught in the middle as Beebe makes sure Miles stays home for the ’65 Le Mans, where Ford blows this and burns up that and just generally all-around eats shit.

This puts the old man’s lugnuts in a real pinch. Same for Miles, who introduces his fist to Shelby’s schnozz soon as he gets back from France, and they roll around in the yard, putting each other in headlocks, Miles’ bag of groceries scattering, walloping each other with loaves of Wonder Bread like quarreling brothers. Mrs. Miles pulls up a lawn chair for the show, then fetches them a cold Coca-Cola. Next year will be different. Next. Year. Will. Be. Different.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Steve McQueen vehicle Le Mans is an obvious one. It also inevitably begs comparison to everything from Days of Thunder to Talladega Nights to, um, Stroker Ace to, uh, The Love Bug and, sure why not, Cars and The Cannonball Run and Death Race 2000.

Performance Worth Watching: Sure, the headliners here offer big, showy, crowd-pleasing performances, Bale talking himself through tricky corners and 200 mph straightaways in a Brummie brogue, Damon delivering whiz-bang line-readings, a cleverly rendered picture of brash confidence. But as Shelby team engineer Phil Remington, Ray McKinnon is the film’s gentle heart; after Miles survives a scary crash, he shares a moment with young Jupe that’s perfectly sweet and melancholy.

Memorable Dialogue: TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN: “Go back to Michigan to your big ugly factory making its ugly little cars and tell your pig-headed boss that all his smug executives are worthless sons of whores.” — Enzo Ferrari throws down the gauntlet

Sex and Skin: None. No time for love when you’re feeling the vibrations of pistons pumping and pumping and pumping inside a scorching-hot engine block.

Our Take: Just because it’s not about Formula 1 doesn’t mean Ford v Ferrari isn’t formulaic. Just because it’s formulaic doesn’t mean it isn’t wildly entertaining. And just because it pits one luminary giant against another in a braggadocio war doesn’t mean it’s a bloated two-and-a-half-hour CGI suck-o-rama like Batman v Superman.

Director James Mangold shifted from two Wolverine movies to this piece of highly polished Hollywood machinery, bringing together many elements of superior mainstream filmmaking for our highly satisfying pleasure: invigorating sound, fab photography, lively practical visual effects, charismatic performances, propulsive editing, exquisite pacing, snappy script. Dialogue-driven scenes burst with color and perfectly timed comic exaggeration; expertly executed racing sequences grip the road tight. Its rogues-against-the-suits and arrogant Americans-against-snooty Italians conflicts are modulated for maximum rah-rah light-drama heavy-comedy effect. Is it corny? A little. Is it a bit too long? Sure. Is it loads of fun? Absolutely.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Mangold is a true pro. If you’re going to make a heightened-reality version of a true story in the classical sense, Ford v Ferrari is how you do it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

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