Grade: C-
I read a user review on IMDb that stated the only thing that qualifies the star of Michael Mann’s Ferrari to play the titular character is his last name is Driver. It’s funny, because as empty as I found the film, I believe Adam Driver gave one of the better biopic performances I’ve seen. The accent wasn’t distracting – it was just right, without the actory flourish. He committed to playing a convincing character, and I often forgot it was him. If he snuck into a Best Actor Oscar nomination for this, I wouldn’t complain.
I’ve had discussions with family and friends about the use of accents in movies and plays where they should be speaking a foreign (for us) language. Some people believe that since they’re speaking English anyway, they should just “talk normally” (American). I don’t necessarily subscribe to that. I saw a production of The Diary of Anne Frank – in English, obviously – but the cast had a dialect which gave the atmosphere some flavor. I also saw one where they talked all normal-like, and that was fine, too.
Ferrari is in English, and the actors do their best with Italian accents. Most of them succeed. Director Michael Mann (Collateral, Ali, The Insider, Heat) is working from the 1991 biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine. The movie is set in the summer of 1957, with his company, on the verge of bankruptcy, entering his racing team into the ‘57 Mille Miglia. Our three main characters are the title character (Driver), his long-suffering wife (an awesome Penélope Cruz), and his mistress (Shailene Woodley from Dumb Money and The Fault in Our Stars).
Their marriage seems to have an arrangement. In an early scene, Cruz tells Driver that she doesn’t care who he goes off to bed with or how many, just as long as he’s home in time for the maid to bring coffee in the morning. So, it’s confusing when the reveal about the affair with Woodley becomes a big dramatic thing later on. If I had to give Ferrari one nomination, it would be Cruz as Best Supporting Actress. She conveys so much with her eyes in long unbroken shots, and injects energy into the proceedings whenever she’s onscreen. Woodley is one of my favorite young actresses working today, but isn’t given a great deal to do.
Ferrari is as routine a biopic as you’re going to get. It remained dead in the water for me. If you’re not interested in cars or the Ferrari story, the movie isn’t going to draw you in. It has gas. It has speed. It has noise. If only it had life.
Grade: C-
Film Reviews by Mark 
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