“Ford v Ferrari” ends with the requisite historical facts to contextualise the “based on a true story” film we’ve just seen. In these end-titles, we learn that the car designed by Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles would go on to the win the 24-hour Le Mans auto-race for three consecutive years – the only American-made car to do so. The entire film, in a way, has been leading up to this moment which offers some faint semblance of heroic catharsis. Like any good film based-on-a-true story, we are left to bask in the historical success of the people whose lives we’ve just glimpsed into. Except, by the time this information comes it feels less than edifying. The film seems to think this bit of information presents a winning end-note to the film, but what it really elicits is a dutiful shrug.
It’s fitting, really. “Ford v Ferrari” seems to be searching for a real conflict for much of its running time. The title promises an immediate one. Ford Motor Company, a giant in many ways, finds itself coming up short against the flashier Ferrari, with the latter company’s excitability buoyed by its domination of the Le Mans auto-race. After a foiled attempt at buying out Ferrari, a spurned Henry Ford II seeks to destroy the company by winning Le Mans with an American-made car. That’s the central conflict. Or, should be as far as the title goes. Except, this isn’t really what the movie is about, and it’s a conflict that is hard to invest in when the even the film seems ambivalent about the dramatic value of the pissing competition between these two companies.
Even as the title promises a company v company showdown, the script abandons that potential conflict for another when the Ford team enlists automotive designer Carroll Shelby to build the car and he enlists his friend Ken Miles, WWII veteran and erratic race-car driver, to drive it. Their work will run from 1963 until the1966 Le Mans competition, when they get a chance to test their ideal car, all the while dealing with the hovering Ford company that interferes with their plans. That movie is at least more compelling than the mechanical conflict of the title but is similarly ambivalent about what it wants to achieve – within the goals of Shelby and Miles the film feels indecisive as it vacillates between a contemplation on masculine identity, the meaning of family, the unfairness of life, the inherent corruption of big companies, and yes, the racing. This is a car-racing movie, so surely the racing should be central? And even within its hackneyed representation of a “struggle to victory” story, “Ford v Ferrari” feels often invested in the kinetic possibility of the racing car excitement the film could fall back on
It’s not until the last forty minutes of the two-and-a-half hour film that we really invest in the spectacle of racing in any earnest way, and by the time it comes it doesn’t feel enough for a film that has been fine enough to watch but hardly compelling enough to demand our allegiance. For all the work the actors are doing, Christian Bale in particular instilling depth in a hazily drawn character, “Ford v Ferrari” never cares to offer any real incisive look at its characters’ motivations. But, it also can’t make good on offering the excitement of adrenaline-intensifying racing sequences, so we’re left with something fairly middling in its wake. And what’s strange about “Ford v Ferrari” is that despite its almost $100 million USD budget, the film is never as technically proficient as you expect it to me. Ron Howard’s Rush did a better job at delivering the thrill of car-racing on a third of the budget.
There’s a story somewhere in here about good-old-Americans overcoming the shifty Europeans – the final shot of Enzo Ferrari seeks to liken him to some Italian Don. But the analogy can’t work, and feels especially incipient in a film where the Americans are perhaps more unctuous than any of their European counterparts. We’re rooting for Shelby and Miles simply because Bale and Damon are injecting them with enough of their personal charm to demand our attention. Miles’ family life is a perfunctory, if well-acted, addition meant to contextualise the value of his life but “Ford v Ferrari” never gives us real reasons to invest in the drama, in the outcome or its point. It’s all diverting and it’s never unpleasant but all this hullabaloo and all this money in service of what? Neither James Mangold’s direction nor the screen-writing trio of Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller seem capable of answering.
“Ford v Ferrari” is currently playing at Caribbean Cinemas and MovieTowne Guyana