Adam Driver is a great actor, so I can see why director Michael Mann would want to cast him as Enzo Ferrari. And hell, with the name “Driver” he was made to play a guy racing cars and building them.
While it was disappointing to see the biographical sports drama “Boys in the Boat” from George Clooney last week, this was a bit more disappointing.
The story on Ferrari starts with a view into his crumbling marriage to Laura (Penelope Cruz). He is out all night, saunters in, and she shoots a gun at him. When we find out later they lost a son, we sympathize a bit with their plight. We’ve all heard that it’s hard on a marriage when the couple loses a child. When we find out he has a whole other family with another woman (Shailene Woodley), we wish one of these bullets would’ve tagged him right below where his seat belt is, and not just the wall behind him.
When his mom says something to him along the lines of “the wrong son died” I immediately thought – didn’t “Walk Hard” (the Judd Apatow film with John C. Reilly) use this very line, to make fun of biopics? But these filmmakers thought – hey, that’s a powerful line, let’s use it!
When I interviewed the best sports filmmaker ever, Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, Tin Cup, White Men Can’t Jump, Cobb, to name a few), before the Coronado Film Festival, I asked him why he never did a race car movie. He said he wrote one, but talked about Ron Howard doing “Rush” (a great film) and how it didn’t make much money, so studios weren’t eager for another racing film. But “Ford v Ferrari” made over $225 million a few years ago (and that was so much better than this film).
Ford v Ferrari is the movie folks should watch over this. While the performances are solid (when are Adam Driver or Penelope Cruz bad?), it’s just not that interesting. And who cares if Driver doesn’t look like the real Ferrari (although I’d like to point out to folks, like my wife, this is why Bradley Cooper didn’t need a prosthetic nose in “Maestro”).
The Laura Ferrari character becomes a bit much of a melodramatic caricature, and that doesn’t quite work with what she ends up doing with the half of the company she owns (I won’t spoil that for you).
Patrick Dempsey looked great, riding into his scenes with silver hair. And with this cast, it ‘s just a shame that writer Troy Kennedy Martin didn’t make this more exciting. I mean, it’s about race cars! It even has a few crashes. Yet we’re never quite pulled into the 1967 Mille Miglia that the Ferrari race team is entering. And I felt the same way about “Boys in the Boat.” They didn’t do enough with their rowing characters to make us feel as invested as we should be.
It’s crazy to think that the race movie that came out months ago, “Gran Turismo” which is based on video game racers, is a lot more interesting (and that boasted the talents of Archie Madekwe, who also blew me away in “Saltburn”).
It’s baffling to see that this film is popping up on some critics’ Top 10 lists, and is getting some award consideration.
1 ½ stars out of 5.