Film Review - Ferrari
Images courtesy of Roadshow Films.
More than you could afford, pal. FERRARI.
High octane thrills, chills and an (un)healthy dosage of familial anguish – Michael Mann’s Ferrari is an exhilarating portrait of a man whose complexity is shaped by a past scarred by immense grief. His world teetering on the edge of collapse - he opts to risk everything by wagering it all on a treacherous endurance race across the Italian countryside. Buckle up buckaroo.
It’s the summer of 1957, and Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is a man beset by anguish and personal hardship. His son has recently died; his marriage to his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) is disintegrating; and he grapples with acknowledging his illegitimate son. But Enzo’s faith is in machinery, and he is an apostolate in his self-made house of god. Faced with the looming threat of his company’s bankruptcy and driven by his self-destructive obsession with victory, Enzo enters his racing team in the Mille Maglia – a 1000 mile endurance race which snakes across the Italian countryside. It’s in these racing scenes that Ferrari really gleams – all bolstered by Mann’s trademark stylistic tropes; the wide angle close-ups; the editorial precision; the precisely calibrated sound design. Everything blends together so palpably that it entirely immerses you – building up to one of the most astonishingly visceral cinematic moments of the last year. Unlike Final Destination 2, it won’t make you afraid of log trucks – but it will effortlessly suck all the air out of your lungs.
This is where things begin to unfortunately falter. It’s clear that much of the surface-level narrative scope is something which could be fixed post-release aided by a much longer cut – but no extended cut will ever be able to salvage Ferrari’s most glaring flaw: the accents. Oh god, those accents (with the exception of Penelope Cruz, she’s great). Admittedly, if we look upon the spectrum of horrendous accents which have permeated pop culture over the years – from Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Elon Musk in that cursed Waluigi courtroom sketch from Saturday Night Live – the accents in Ferrari aren’t considerably bad in comparison. But their presence is severe enough to greatly detract from this film being able to grasp its ultimate potential – rendering the criticism levied by many in the Italian film industry over its usage of American performers to be exceptionally valid. Despite this, Driver and Cruz specifically stand out in moments of quiet hostility; their grief etched on their faces as it eats them from the inside out.
The lens of Mann's trademark cinematography paints a visually stunning picture draped in a captivating candy red veneer, yet amidst the visual splendour lies a muddied narrative which falls spectacularly short in unravelling the profound complexities of the man behind the prancing horse. Whilst undoubtedly a visually stunning spectacle which seeks to capture the essence of speed, passion, and the timeless allure of the Ferrari brand, this is a film that will most certainly be cast into the annals of dad-core chic and JB-Hi-Fi 4K displays forever.
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Ferrari is screening in cinemas from Thursday 4th January. For tickets and more info, click here.