Ferrari: A Review - Despite a Bad Driver, Ferrari Wins the Race
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A solid biopic that features some subpar acting but also some fantastic racing sequences.
Ferrari, directed by Michael Mann and starring Adam Driver, is a biopic that tells the story of iconic Italian industrialist and race car manufacturer, Enzo Ferrari, as he navigates a series of tumultuous business and personal events in 1957.
Ferrari, which is written by Troy Kennedy Martin and is based on the book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine by Brock Yates, is a strange film. The reason for this strangeness is that sometimes the sum of a film is never as good as the quality of its parts, but that is not the case in regards to Ferrari, which is somehow able to be considerably better than the individual pieces that make up its whole.
For example, you’d think for a biopic about a hard-charging, iconic Italian race car impresario you’d have to have a strong performance from the lead actor in the title role in order for the film to work. In the case of Ferrari, which stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, the film works despite its lead actor, not because of him.
Driver is a mysterious actor in that it is an utter mystery to me why this insipid clod ever gets work, never mind works with great directors like Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese. As Enzo, a man juggling essentially two families, one with his wife and one with his girlfriend, and who is aggressively trying to have the greatest racing team in the world and maintain his auto business, the empty Driver feels like a kid playing dress up in his grandfather’s much too big suits. His ungodly awful, clownish Italian accent comes and goes like an engine missing the requisite sparkplugs, just like it did when Driver stumbled through the embarrassing Ridley Scott soap opera House of Gucci as another Italian titan of industry…Maurizio Gucci. Considering Driver’s artistic vacuity and acting vapidity, as well as his wandering parmesan cheese of an accent, and his insidiously shallow interpretations of characters, it seems to me the only iconic Italian he should ever be allowed to play is Chef Boyardee.
Another acting issue is Shailene Woodley, who is egregiously miscast as Lina Lardi, who is less Enzo’s gumar than she is his second wife and mother to his bastard son. Woodley gives a distractingly stilted and ineffective performance as Lina as she feels like she belongs in Malibu and not Molena.
The one saving grace regarding the acting is Penelope Cruz, who is absolutely brilliant as Enzo’s wife and business partner, Laura. There’s a scene early in the film where Laura visits her son’s grave and in the span of maybe thirty seconds Cruz, in close up, tells a wondrous and expansive story without saying a word. It’s a captivating and powerful piece of acting, and one that is heightened because Driver’s Enzo has a similar scene just prior to it that is nothing but verbosity filled with vacant histrionics.
Cruz is an actress that I rarely, if ever, think of, but her performance in Ferrari is yet another reminder for absent-minded dopes like me that she is among the most talented and skilled actresses in the world today.
Despite two of the three main performances being subpar, Ferrari pulls off the minor miracle of managing to be not just watchable but relentlessly compelling. A major reason for this is that the racing and driving scenes alone are worth the price of admission. Every racing scene is visceral, vital and undeniably electrifying. Mann and his cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt shoot the racing from innumerable ingenious angles with energetic camera movements that capture the dynamic thrill of the sport, and master editor Pietro Scalia splices it all together for the absolute maximum potency and power.
That said, some of the racing sequences can be a bit confusing, as the racing teams from Ferrari and Maserati have similar looks and coloring. But beyond that the racing is superb, and contrary to some reports I’ve read, I did not find the CGI to be distracting or second rate at all.
Michael Mann is an often-overlooked filmmaker who boasts a robust filmography which features a bevy of good and sometimes great movies. In recent years Mann’s output has slowed and diminished in quality, with Ferrari being his first film since 2015’s dismal Blackhat.
Mann’s films are inhabited by a particular type of tormented masculinity, where the protagonist is insatiably driven and must overcome the numerous obstacles placed in front of him as well as the internal burdens which haunt him .
Thief, Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider and Collateral are all top notch pieces of cinema that capture Mann’s storytelling and slick visual style across different genres….. but it is his 1995 masterpiece, Heat, which is the absolute apex of his filmmaking career. Heat is one of the best films of the last thirty years as it features the greatest bank robbery and shootout scene captured in the history of cinema, which is an astonishing accomplishment.
Ferrari is nowhere near the level of film as Heat, but it does represent a somewhat more mature piece of storytelling from Mann, that is not to say that Mann’s earlier work was adolescent, but to say that Ferrari captures a man (and Mann) growing old and dealing with the precipitous burdens of his age and station.
It must also be said that Ferrari is also not as good as James Mangold’s brilliant 2019 film Ford v Ferrari, which Michael Mann Executive Produced. Ford v Ferrari is a better film across the board and features better racing sequences, but Ferrari is no slouch and is a quality piece of cinema in its own right. In fact, Ferrari would make a perfect companion piece to Mangold’s auto-racing masterpiece.
The bottom-line regarding Ferrari is that I was very pleasantly surprised to find it a thoroughly solid, utterly compelling, if flawed, piece of cinema despite the often-lackluster acting. I wholly encourage you to check it out in the theatre if possible, or on streaming when the time comes.
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