Ferrari (2023)

I struggled so hard to enjoy Michael Mann's film Ferrari. Mann is a talented director who has some amazing movies in his oeuvre but there is this ongoing problem with these movies made about so called "great men" that rely on their names to propel us through the film instead of actually delivering a compelling story. Ferrari may be one of the best examples of this problem. 

Ferrari isn't a regular sort of biopic. Mann focuses his story on one main incident, the infamous 1957 Mille Miglia where 12 people were killed in a rather freak accident after a Ferrari driver lost control of his vehicle. The choice of this is obvious for cinematic reasons. It's easy to build drama around this chapter in the man's life. But it is also why the film lost me. The film uses this tragedy as for pathos but does all it can not to reckon with the actual hubris of the sport of racing and the millionaires who benefit from it. In fact the film does all it can to absolve all responsibility for dangerous sporting from the title character. these films tend to do these sorts of things to keep the great man myth alive in our hearts. Ferrari is just the latest example. 

But it's also just not that well made of a film. The performances are mostly rote including Driver (coincidentally named) with perhaps the sole exception of Cruz who has the inglorious role of "crazy" wife whose sole job it is to make our hero long suffering and to then turn around his fortunes without any real explanations at the very end conveniently. The story is a bit of a slog between racing sequences, which are truly the only reason to watch the film. Mann handles them quite well but bungles the inbetweens. 

Ferrari just felt like nothing special most of the time and often felt like it was bending over backwards to keep us onside. The denouement after the crash feels underwhelming and rather convenient, like he just needed to make sure that last bits all fit into place before running the credits. Sometimes watching films like this you think "there is an interesting story here but this film just isn't telling it" but in this case I wonder if there really is any interesting story at all. 

Ferrari

Starring: Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Gabriel Leone, Jack O'Connell, Patrick Dempsey, Sarah Gadon, Ben Collins

Director: Michael Mann

Writer: Troy Kennedy Martin