Ford v. Ferrari

“There’s a point at 7000rpm, where everything fades.”

At Willow Springs Raceway just outside Rosamond, California, driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) can’t get his MG to qualify as the luggage capacity of the trunk is too small.  So he grabs a sledge hammer and bangs out a few cubic inches.  The introduction, set two hours from Edwards Air Force Base, with Beach Boys-style rock music in the soundtrack, with a voice over evoking Jack Ridley’s (Levon Helm) speech about the demon on the Mach meter, FORD V. FERRARI yearns to be Phil Kaufman’s THE RIGHT STUFF on wheels.

Suffering from brand image and bureaucracy problems, Ford Motor Co. attempts to enlist Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to design a sports car to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, part of the Triple Crown of Endurance Motorsport—including Sebring and Daytona.

When Ford loses a bid to Fiat to acquire Ferrari, executives appeal to the Chairman’s ego by telling them Ferrari thinks their cars and factories are ugly, and that Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts)—aka “The Deuce”—is not his father.  Enraged, Ford the Junior authorizes a young Lee Iacocca (Joe Bernthal) to hire the best engineers to design the greatest car the iconic American manufacturer has ever made.

The man who would later become the famed Chairman of Chrysler enlists Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to build the GT40 in 90 days. Without the power to defeat the Ferrari, Shelby replaces the 289 small block with a 7-liter V8 engine—the most powerful Ford yet produced.   A finicky vehicle with substantial oversteer and brake heat problems, Shelby recognizes that Ken Miles is the only driver who can rein in the GT40’s unpredictable performance to a win at Le Mans.

Naturally, Miles and Shelby clash with Ford’s corporate culture of design by committee.  Vice President Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) wants a different driver, reasoning that Ken lacks the poise and charm to handle interviews.  They think of him as a beatnik because he dares to listen to his wife and doesn’t fit the Ozzie and Harriet image that Ford nonetheless needs to shed to win over younger consumers in the turbulent, late sixties.

The Ridley-Yeager dynamic works on the strength of Christian Bale’s acting chops as the leathery speed demon.  But the film keeps leaning heavily on overly melodramatic flourishes—Shelby and Beebe weren’t nearly the comic characters they seem here.  Kaufman’s picture went for the austere metaphors of the Western.  Yet Bale and Caitriona Balfe portray Ken and Mollie Miles with the same competitive/cooperative, spirited marriage as Chuck (Sam Shepard) and Glennis Yeager (Barbara Hershey) in THE RIGHT STUFF.

Hindered only by an excessive volume of CG to re-create the 1965 championship track and some of the vehicles far too expensive to drive at racing speeds, the climactic showdown at Le Mans is tense, adrenaline-filled fun.  More gumption than gravitas, FORD V. FERRARI excites and entertains yet also serves as a meta-analysis of design by committee.