The London Film Festival’s Surprise Film night is generally a crowd-pleasing affair, attracting all sorts of punters and programmed accordingly – nothing too difficult, weird, long, or subtitles-y. On paper, Michael Mann’s Ferrari, which made its UK debut as the Surprise Film back in October, should have proven a perfect fit; it’s a biopic of a well-known figure with a commanding central performance from Adam Driver, with some technically bravura and action-packed set-pieces to match. Yet, Ferrari emerged as something far odder and less likable than its festival billing would suggest, an incredible rush whenever anyone gets behind the wheel, but alienating and dull in its domestic dramas.
A long-gestating passion project for Mann, Ferrari takes us to 1957, where the legendary car company’s equally legendary founder Enzo Ferrari (Driver, looking not unlike Mann himself when sporting Enzo’s silver mane) is at his lowest ebb. His business is running out of money, Ferrari’s dominance on the racetrack is being challenged by Maserati, his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) hates him, and his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) wants him to acknowledge the secret son they have together and have him confirmed under the Ferrari family name. At least on the car side of things, there appears to be a solution – for Ferrari and its team of drivers to win the Mille Miglia, a brutal 1,000 mile endurance race across Italy, attracting the TV attention and foreign capital that comes with such a feat.
The Mille Miglia story and the Ferrari family one don’t ever really gel together, in part simply due to the racing being so, so much more interesting than the household stuff. Driver and Cruz, each sporting House of Gucci-esque Italian accents, are weighty presences, to be sure, but the script from the late Troy Kennedy Martin (written many years ago) is so dull and blunt that they’re given little opportunity to really shine. Every conversation feels first draft, no song or subtlety to any of the dialogue, a problem made even worse when Enzo is with Lina rather than Laura. Cruz has enough magnetism to imbue her words with some sparkle, but Woodley, whose own attempt at an Italian accent is to barely remember to do one, does not.
Aside from an early scene in which Enzo visits his first son’s grave, we get very little sense of the man himself, which should be death for any biopic, but Mann’s formal daring means Ferrari is impossible to write off. Even in the quieter moments, the camerawork has a consistent flair for the dramatic and when it’s finally time to race, the action is handled with the mastery one would expect from Mann.
He loves these cars almost as much as Enzo does, aesthetically and functionally perfect, capable of inspiring awe and great fear. The races, as well as being visceral and immersive, are absolutely fucking terrifying, genuinely capturing the dropped-stomach feeling you get when you’re the passenger in a car going too fast with too little control. Mann and his team really let you know the power that these drivers had to wrangle and the stakes that come with it – a scene in which we see just how much violence these machines can inflict when something goes wrong is head-spinning.
If you’re already a Mann fan or have even a casual interest in motorsport, Ferrari is undoubtedly one to see on the biggest, loudest screen possible. Yet, when the screech and roar of cars going over 100mph around tracks ends up as a more appealing soundscape than the dialogue, it is very hard to care about any of the story or characters here. It’s as much a biography of the cars that bear his name as it is of the man himself and the fact is that the cars make for better company.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 
Good review. The film was informative about the Ferrari company and the personal inner workings that Enzo goes through to maintain excellence. Still, the narrative (like you said) is largely unfocused and meanders too much for its own good. Plus, it abruptly ends just when the story starts getting good. Driver and Cruz were fantastic in it, but much of the supporting characters sort of get lost in the film and don’t have much of being memorable.