Directed by James Mangold
Written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller
Starring Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Jon Bernthal (other white dudes too!)
Running Time 2 hours, 32 minutes (surprisingly it mostly races by… ha!)
MPAA Rating PG-13

by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport 

“I’m not what they call a people person.”

The entire premise of Ford v Ferrari can be summed up as: just a couple of dudes havin’ an old fashioned pissing contest.

It is amazing what a person, historically those of the male gender, will do when another individual verbally belittles them. In the scenario played out in James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari, apparently a true story, Henry Ford II was willing to spend millions of dollars to build a race car simply because Enzo Ferrari negatively commented on his paunchy physique and called Ford’s autos ugly. The end goal was to beat Ferrari in the illustrious, annual, twenty-four hours of Le Mans race: a race testing one's stamina, as drivers are on the road for twenty-four hours with the mission to have their vehicle cover the largest distance. Rather than speed, teams are awarded a win if their car is able to endure the length of the race. Ford v Ferrari is set in 1966. Prior to this, no American had ever won the race. American automakers were not known for their racing vehicles, this could especially be said for the Ford Motor Company, which was more known for its family-style autos. 

Centrally this story is about a couple of babies in snazzy jumpsuits (aka onzies) with their names embroidered on them driving around in circles in extremely fast motorcars. Note to self: I need to have my name (Kicks) embroidered on shirts and possibly acquire a onzie. The plot is rather thin. There is no sense of who these people actually were beyond the car they were attempting to build to go reallllly fast. This choice is rather astonishing, since the cast is stacked, consisting of: Christian Bale, Caitriona Balfe, Matt Damon and Jon Bernthal. It was quite impressive what Caitriona Balfe, whom played the wife of Ken Miles (Christian Bale), was able to accomplish on screen given that her part seemed to be written as an afterthought. She left me wanting to know more about her backstory. 

Matt Damon plays the auto designer and race car driver Carroll Shelby. Unfortunately, he seems to wind up being the Nikola Tesla of the group: a smart egg that is consistently and constantly pushed around having his ideas credited to others. Shelby is brought on board by the Ford team, specifically a marketing guru played by Jon Bernthal, to help create the super-fast wheels to win the race. To make this happen, Shelby grabs his rough around the edges pal Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a superb racing driver and engineer. Problem is, Ken is not much of a people person and does not fit in well with the Ford gang, who come to be called the “the suits”. This is specifically true of his relationship with Ford’s right hand man, Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas), a weasley type fella that seems to center his existence on being a grade A jerk. This causes some Hollywood dramatics throughout the course of the movie, but nothing to get too excited about. 

The film just doesn’t have time for story, the cars have to go zoom zoom and honestly, someone that is going out to see this thing is in the seat because of the jalopies, not the narrative. Which brings me to something that was concurred after viewing the flick with some of my local film associates: this movie is accessible. When I say accessible, I am talking about one group in particular - the dads. This piece of cinema falls in the genre that I am now coining as dad movies™. My father enjoys to catch a flick every once in a while, particularly those centering around three things: history (including bio-pics and based on a true jawns), mafias, Redfordz and sportz (thank you for your assistance with compiling this list Dr. Carruthers). Dad isn’t spending time taking in the costumes or production design and, as long as the story is easy to make sense of, he is good to go. Now, I am not saying my father is an imbecile (wellll…), he is just not a film guy. He does not watch movies for the same reasons that I watch movies and that is OK. 

With that said, this latest James Mangold flick is something that I would comfortably watch with my father as it will not induce a conversation to occur. It is best when our chit chat is kept minimal.  We can simply just watch and enjoy without the minutia. It will go down as a precious moment from the 2019 holiday season. 

In all seriousness, Mangold is still on my list of stand-up directors. He rarely disappoints and has such an extremely diverse filmography ranging from Walk the Line (bio-pic on Johnny Cash) to Logan to Girl, Interrupted to one that warmed my cold dark heart, Kate and Leopold. This is a director that is willing to stretch his legs and, although his films may not end up on some “best of lists”, he is still out there making some quality work that is worth the ticket price.