No spoilers, but towards the end of Michael Mann’s uneven biopic there’s a startling (not especially cheesy) sequence that reminds the viewer that this is the work of a virtuoso film-maker. If only one could say the same for the script. Or the rest of this plodding movie.
It’s 1957 and Enzo Ferrari, motor-racing champion turned entrepreneur, has lost a son, is juggling a wife and girlfriend, and is facing bankruptcy on the eve of the decisive Mille Miglia race. A dull man of immense privilege with a conveyer belt of female archetypes – bland mistress (Shailene Woodley), scorned wife with business acumen (Penélope Cruz), shrewish mother – to care for his various needs, Enzo is only truly alive during the few scenes when he is talking about engines with his young son.
Ferrari, as adapted from Brock Yates’ 1991 biography, Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine, has been knocking around Hollywood for decades. Sure enough, it handles like a project with too many miles on the clock and too many pitstops around various studios and actors, including Paramount, Christian Bale, STX, Noomi Rapace and Hugh Jackman. Tellingly, it was written by Troy Kennedy Martin, who died in 2009.
Adam Driver, a truly great actor who failed to get the post-House of Gucci memo on phoney Italian accents, affects a phoney Italian accent as the mech bro of the title. Save for brand recognition, there is no justification to place this indecipherable, emotionally distant character at the centre of any film. Various dreary meetings played out over what feels like a geological age finally yields some interesting secondary players, including Jack O’Connell’s Peter Collins, Ben Collins’s Stirling Moss and a tremendous Patrick Dempsey as their fellow racing driver Piero Taruffi.
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Among the undercooked female parts, Cruz converts a nothing wife role into fabulous distress. Even she can’t save Ferrari. Who knew a film about fast cars could be such a slog?
Ferrari opens in cinemas on St Stephen’s Day
