Movie Review – Ford v Ferrari

Vrooming to Victory

The first impact the movie would have, would be on your ears. Especially, if you had watched the movie with earphones like I did. Either you’d be enjoying the sound of cars whizzing from one ear to another like it happened with “Omahaziya” in your Sony Walkman or you’d be complaining of pain in your ears. Whatever may be the case, like the imaginary sparrows spinning around Tom’s head when Jerry makes him hit any roadblock with his mischief, the imaginary sound of the elite cars of the sixties would be buzzing in your head.

I’m a big fan of racing games, even though I’m not good at it. Just like how I like Mathematics even though I don’t get good marks in that subject. In Need for Speed, there used to be a stage where we would get slow cars and great environment. It would be easier to handle the cars around the corners, it doesn’t skid and other cars don’t cut corners every now and then. That used to be my favorite part of the racing game, I couldn’t proceed post that. Ford v Ferrari gave that vibe. This film would have felt lot more clinical if it had used the color of that era. Because if someone sees the film just out of the blue, by ways of film making, no one would be able to tell the time period. It feels recent. But I do understand that it’ll make the film artsy if made that way.

It was a film which was long impending in my list and just like anyone I thought it’d be a movie about two giants and their fights. When I started watching it, I understood it had two leads. I thought I was right. At least till the first half an hour of the movie I was of the opinion that one person out of the two would go to the other company and that’s what the film is about. But the director James Mangold cleverly doesn’t do that. A nice way to mislead the audience right from the way posters, title etc. were made.

The movie starts with Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) retiring from racing due to a health issues. It’s lovely to notice his composure. What I thought would be about his revival story or rage wasn’t there at all except for the one scene and my favorite one, where he takes Henry Ford 2 (Tracy Letts) for a spin. Reminded me of the story Lokesh Kanagaraj told as an idea for ‘Vikram’, where the lion says to the fox, “even though I’m old, I’m still a lion”. Apart from that Matt Damon doesn’t have much to do.

The movie is about Ken Miles (Christian Bale) entirely. May be that’s why Christian Bale would have agreed to do it. Bale was phenomenal in the movie. It’d have been a treat to his fans. Even for a non-fan like me, it felt like one of his best performance, if not the best. I generally feel he overdoes his role and spoils the flavor of the movie. But here it was to the point. From the posters I thought it’d have been Matthew McConaughey. Just imagine if the same movie had been made by Scorsese or Fincher and had McConaughey and DiCaprio as leads. It’d have been truly legendary.

There is no risk taken in the movie and that’s why the universal impact and that’s the reason the movie suffers from normalcy and doesn’t become a legendary movie. It’s a movie which anyone would like if they watch but if you ask me whether it’s a must watch movie, I’d say rather not, because the same feeling would be got from any movies of this genre like may be say a ‘Real Steel’. That’s the problem with making risk free movies. It’d be neither like a guilty pleasure movie like a ‘Death Race’ or ‘Fast and Furious’ nor like a cult movie like ‘Baby Driver’. It’d come and go, entertain, but wouldn’t impact.