[Thoughts originally posted at the Toronto International Film Festival on 09.16.19]
I’m not sure what to make of these “Ford v Ferrari” reviews, which are all mostly positive but with restraint praise. I, on the other hand, won’t restrain myself in saying it’s one of the most joyously entertaining big-studio pictures of the year. A real movie-movie if you will. A bromance between American automotive designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and fearless British race car driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale), the gist of the film has the Ford Motor Co, angry at Ferrari, hiring Shelby and Miles to build them a race car and compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966. The usual corporate interference occurs, as do the laws of physics to build this new revolutionary vehicle and drive it. Clocking in at 152 minutes, director James Mangold (“Logan”) has made a rousing American epic that zooms by at lightning speed. The film does not feel like its length at all. Credit must go to the chemistry between Damon and Bale; every interaction and relationship is precisely on-point here. Mangold handles it all with the real care and feel of a filmmaking pro — the race car driving scenes here, especially at the climax, are some of the very best and most thrilling ever put on film. The script by brothers Jez and John Henry Butterworth has both tragedy and triumph, and may have not needed its unnecessary coda, but this is the kind of film that is all-too-rare these days, a Hollywood epic about flawed men, the paths in life that they decide to take and the ultimate fate they cannot prevent. [B+]