Grade: C+
I do my best to respect the official punctuation when I type movie titles. mother! has a lower case m and an exclamation point. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood has the ellipsis. Sometimes it begs the question of how do you pronounce the title when speaking it? Last year’s best Best Picture nominee, BlacKkKlansman, really had me wondering. Do you say Black KKK Klansman? Black K Klansman? Turned out it’s the simplest answer: Black Klansman. Now we have Ford v Ferrari. Would you literally say “Ford V Ferrari?” My instinct is to go with “Ford versus Ferrari.” However you say it, the film is overlong and esoteric. It is talky when you wish it would literally cut to the chase, but then even the action is boring.
Director James Mangold has an impressive and prolific resume, which includes Cop Land, Girl, Interrupted, Identity, Walk the Line, Logan, and he has NINE upcoming projects. This is based on the true story of Carroll Shelby, Ken Miles, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966. If you’re old enough to remember this, but somehow don’t, I don’t blame you. Released in mid-November 2019, FvF would have been a perfect one for a summer opening. A couple performances kept my interest, if the screenplay didn’t undercut them or they didn’t undercut themselves. It was nice to see Josh Lucas again. The ever-versatile Christian Bale, who has played Batman, Dick Cheney, and a newsie, toes the line between character and caricature, with his mannerisms and accent. I eventually wanted Matt Damon to spit out his gum. Tracy Letts, a supporting actor who I admired ever since The Post and Lady Bird, does nice work here as Henry Ford – frosty-cold, curt, serious, and intimidating. But then he has a scene where all of that gets thrown out the window momentarily to try to get the kind of cheap laughs you might see in a 90s Adam Sandler comedy. But not to worry, after that, he’s abruptly back to the usual Henry Ford. A fistfight between Damon and Bale goes on at least a minute too long, and characters seem to survive too much, except for when it’s convenient to the plot. The fire has read the screenplay.
Ford v Ferrari seems to think it’s the Top Gun of car racing movies. I’ll grant that it is well-filmed with neat summery locations, but made me feel empty otherwise. But hey, if the ending teaches us anything, just throw up some captions on the screen to let us know what ends up happening to everybody, toss in a little voice-over narration, put an upbeat song on the soundtrack, have somebody put on sunglasses and drive off, and you’re good to go.
Grade: C+
Film Reviews by Mark 
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