Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

I was middling on F V F. In general, most sports movies leave me flat since they always seem to veer toward the subject of the plot line being the single most significant thing that has ever happened but, at the same time, have stereotypic plot lines, which seems like an oxymoron. I gave FVF a couple extra points since auto racing is an unusual subject for the usual plot turns of sports movies but still, it was a sports movie.

One of the producers?;)

Heh, heh. You devil...:cool:

For the record (which record, I don't know), I enjoyed the film but preferred the documentary, The 24 Hour War (2016), directed by Nate Adams and Adam Carolla.

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

It was a good movie

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

love that movie

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

Looks good, need to watch it, I am interested quite a bit in automotive history so it will be a good watch.

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

It's an interesting chapter, but has always seemed somewhat like the reverse of the usual underdog triumph story of sports movies. In this case, Ferrari had achieved excellence as a small company but pissed off Henry Ford who wanted to use his corporate might to squash the little Italian worm. Aside from the U-S-A!-U-S-A!! sentiment, it seems like a story that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, and it's not one of those underdog, come-from-behind sort of sports movies.

Not Bale’s natural accent. He’s Welsh & his character, Ken Miles, was from my hometown of Birmingham, England. And, no, he didn’t have a Brummie accent per se.

Bale reminds me of Day Lewis always. Don’t think he is a method actor like Day Lewis, but, like him, Bale puts 100% into a rôle.

Hardly a movie about women, real or otherwise. Caitriona Balfe under-utilized in her rôle of “wife of” and “mother of”.

Indeed. The character was rather irrationally written, screaming for him to stop racing one minute, egging him on the next. Very bizarre.

My take:


Ford v. Ferrari(2019)

It’s difficult to come up with something fresh for an auto racing film. There have been both good ones and poor ones in the past, so the challenge for the production is to captivate and excite the viewer without falling prey to the familiarity of a standard racing film. Ford v. Ferrari almost succeeds.

It’s a true life American success story that portrays the challenge of Henry Ford II to build a Le Mans Prototype race car to overcome Ferrari’s dominance in the Le Mans field, and to become the first U.S. automobile company to do so in that format. There's rarely a surprise conclusion in this type of story, but we'll avoid the spoilers.

There's plenty of excitement in the racing scenes, but most of the competitiveness comes early, and surprisingly between Mr. Ford and Mr. Ferrari rather than from the racing drivers. In fact much of the racing footage could have been from solo time trials. There was little head to head battling. Still the racing filmed from the point of view of the driver was exciting.

The human elements of the story bordered on triteness. Some of the human interaction was obviously exaggerated in a rather hackneyed manner. The writing and portrayal of Ford's racing chairman, Leo Beebe bordered on caricature.

But most of the acting was well done, with Christian Bale being the chief standout. He was able to present nearly a full range, and convincingly so. Matt Damon on the other hand seemed to be playing Matt Damon. Mostly a mail-in part for him.

The writers took some liberties with the actual story, but in the main it was historically close. In my view a better film of the subject was the documentary The 24 Hour War by Nate Adams and Adam Carolla. That film is more exciting and suspenseful, while using real footage and real interviews of the principals.

Ford v. Ferrari is a watchable film with exciting scenes and with good acting by Bale. It's a trifle long, but mostly enjoyable.

Doc's rating: 7/10

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

I read an interesting take on the movie that says it portrays Ford as David and Ferrari as Goliath but in reality it was the other way round, so perhaps it would have been a better movie if Ferrari were the good guys and Ford the big bad corporate come to take over.

Right. Her only decent scene & it is a good one is when she was driving the car.

I didn't think of it as having U-S-A!-U-S-A! sentiment, it's just that historically, the winner of the two, just happened to be American, so it was just a mere matter of happenstance, I thought.

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

Eh, I'm not sure if "underdog" can be reduced to "total size." The point of the story is that they're the underdog in this area. They make lots of cheap, slow, efficient cars for people to drive to work in, but they're not racers, and are (apparently) looked down on by the people who are, because that's the bleeding edge of car tech and they've made their money on the other end of things.

I don't think the film tries to hide this, either: for crying out loud, we see Bale and Damon operating out of a massive airplane hanger at one point! It makes it clear the whole thing is based on a fit of pique from two wealthy and powerful men. The underdogs are the two guys trying to pull a U-Turn and make this a world-class racing operation even though so much of its structure and emphasis has been dedicated to other things.

Big company jumps into uncharted waters (for them) - pours in resources - hires top help - fairly quickly get their act together - dominates.

The film was ok but I would call this a fundamental flaw with the story, preventing it from being something special.

It might have made for an interesting story watching the amateurs (Ferrari) hold off the corporate powerhouse and ultimately failing.

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

I dunno, not only do you have the "new entrant" thing, you also have the fact that Ford is a collective, and at odds with itself: the "heroes" of the film are not Ford, but the two guys, the real car guys within who have to come in and often fight the existing Ford elements to do things the right way.

I also wouldn't underestimate the strong element of classism underlying it all: it's not whether Ferrari has as many resources, it's whether they look down on Ford, because they make cars for (and by) the working man. Sports cars are, by their very nature, a rich person's thing.

Toss in the attitudes Americans and Europeans sometimes have for each other (in aggregate) and how well it mirrors all of this, and I think the framing works pretty well despite Ford being a larger company.

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

Yea you're right there, from what I remember it's a bigger fight inhouse than it is against Ferrari, who perhaps didn't get enough screen time actually, now that I think about it. Maybe that's another flaw, and that it should have been called "Ford Racing vs Ford vs Ferrari" :)

Again don't disagree with the 2nd paragraph either but for all Ferrari's elitist attitude it didn't count for much once the Ford juggernaut was needled into action, and as for the economics, Ferrari of that time were somewhat impoverished despite appearances from what I remember and Ford had the blank chequebook.

However I would strongly disagree that the film landed so well, which is of course a matter of opinion, I found it to be quite forgettable and I doubt it will be remembered much at all in a few years. In fact the boardroom scenes with Henry Ford II were probably the most interesting parts, and that's worrying for a racing film.

Re: Ford vs ferrari movie with bale/damon
 

Though perhaps the problems I'm having are a result of the name change from "Le Mans 66" to "Ford vs Ferrari" which sounds like some sort of studio name change fearing that people wouldn't know what it's about.

This movie was a technical wonder, but the subject matter just wasn't that interesting to me...here's a link to my review:


https://www.movieforums.com/reviews/...v-ferrari.html