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This racing picture is a period piece, set in the early 1960s, and there’s also something retro about the kind of movie storytelling it represents. Directed by James Mangold and given spectacular horsepower by dual male leads Christian Bale and Matt Damon , “Ford v Ferrari” recounts, in a sometimes exhilaratingly streamlined fashion, a tale of Motor City dominance-seeking that compels you to root for good guys who are doing the bidding of rather bad guys.

Damon plays Carroll Shelby, a champion racer whose hypertension forces retirement. His opening voiceover about what it feels like to hit 7,000 RPM with a car sets the tone in the “Why We Race” category. After hanging up his gloves/helmet in Hollywood, Shelby goes into car sales with a sideline in modification and design, and he also manages some racers, including the hotheaded Ken Miles, played with a cheeky, elastic physicality by Bale. Both fellows are at low ebbs when opportunity knocks.

The opportunity originates in Detroit. There, Henry Ford II, played by Tracy Letts as if he’s suffering incurable heartburn, is dissatisfied with things at the company founded by his grandfather. (While the car is never mentioned in the movie, the Edsel had made its disastrous debut four years prior to the action in this film beginning.) He wants new ideas, and he’s not too crazy about the one brought to him by youngish hotshot exec Lee Iacocca ( Jon Bernthal ). The idea is to buy the Italian car giant of the movie’s title. Enzo Ferrari not only refuses the Ford offer, he delivers, via Iacocca’s proxy, some vivid insults to Ford the Second. This hurts Ford’s pride. And makes him determined to best Ferrari’s cars on the race track of Le Mans, home of a 24-hour race that has never been won by an American car.

You don’t need to be a car person to appreciate the conventional but crackling human drama that animates “Ford v Ferrari.” On the one side, there’s Shelby and Miles. Both mavericks, but one with a little more give than the other. Tasked by Ford with creating not just a car but a racing team that can best Enzo’s, they go all out with Ford’s money. On the other side are the often truculent Ford and his second-in-command Leo Beebe ( Josh Lucas playing buttoned-up cocky). Beebe’s not an ambitious bootlicker. He’s something worse. He’s a guy who adheres to corporate principle because he actually believes it’s right. He doesn’t want Miles as the new car’s driver because the volatile “beatnik” (Beebe’s term) doesn’t conform to his or anyone’s idea of a “Ford man.” Beebe gets his way once, and it doesn’t work out for him.

But the thing about a character like this is if you thwart him once, he will just keep coming back. Beebe’s persistent attempts to screw Miles, in this film scripted by Jez Butterworth , John-Henry Butterworth , and Jason Keller , juice up the rooting interest aspect of the movie. As do its support characters: Caitriona Balfe as Miles’ wife, who is not, contrary to the usual practice in such films, a disapproving worrier; Noah Jupe as Miles' son who idolizes his dad unconditionally; Ray McKinnon as Shelby’s most trusted engineering lieutenant.

Damon is superb in the kind of role he excels at: a man of integrity who gets steered off the path and is subsequently righted. Lest all of this sound heavy, I should assure you that “Ford v Ferrari” is exactly as fun, maybe even more fun, than its well-put-together trailer makes it out to be. The dialogue is replete with zingers and the racing sequences are a blast. Mangold sticks to the verities and conveys high speeds and potentially deadly impacts with a lot of gusto; there’s very little that looks tricked-up or obviously animated.

As for the retro part, well it’s kind of sad: 30 or 40 years ago, a movie like “Ford v Ferrari” would be a staple of studio fare. Nowadays, it’s actually considered a risk, despite being, by an older standard, about as mainstream as mainstream gets. “Ford v Ferrari” delivers real cinema meat and potatoes. And its motor show spectacle deserves to be seen in a theater. 

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Ford v Ferrari movie poster

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

152 minutes

Matt Damon as Caroll Shelby

Christian Bale as Ken Miles

Jon Bernthal as Lee Iacocca

Tracy Letts as Henry Ford II

Caitriona Balfe as Mollie Miles

Noah Jupe as Peter Miles

Josh Lucas as Leo Beebe

Ray McKinnon as Phil Remington

  • James Mangold
  • Jez Butterworth
  • John-Henry Butterworth

Director of Photography

  • Phedon Papamichael
  • Michael McCusker

Original Music Composer

  • Marco Beltrami

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‘Ford v Ferrari’ Review: It’s a Gas

Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in James Mangold’s look back at the golden age of auto racing.

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‘Ford v Ferrari’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director james mangold narrates a scene featuring christian bale and matt damon..

Hi, this is Jim Mangold, director of ‘Ford v Ferrari.’ As we begin this sequence, we’re at the top of the third act of the film, and Christian Bale, playing Ken Miles, is walking out about 10 minutes before the race begins to prepare to start a 24 hour race at Le Mans. My camera kind of tries to set up what this place looks like in the stands, and the spectacle of it. We’ve seen it earlier in the film empty, but never seen it in this moment in full flower, packed with crowds and about to go. The point for me, or the strategy here, was to kind of show the calm before the storm. There’s a lot of pageantry and everyone’s tense. Here’s Matt Damon, who plays Carroll Shelby, joining Christian, looking over the Ferrari cars as they go by, which are their chief nemesis in the race and the most brilliantly engineered cars that exist at that point, “Looks flash, don’t it?” “Eh, looks aren’t everything.” Enzo Ferrari in the stands watching over them. For me, the goal in this sequence was to show the kind of stress that everyone is living with, but playing down, going about their tasks, getting ready to start the race. “You can take ‘em. Four minutes, Ken. Four minutes, buddy.” “Live from Le Mans, France—” “Mom! Come on.” ”—it’s the world’s most—” - Alright, coming ”—brutal, torturous automobile race.” Here we see Ken Miles’ family back at home in Los Angeles watching. For all the characters you see, these Ford executives— that’s Jon Bernthal is Lee Iacocca, Enzo Ferrari— all the characters brought to this point in time with the fate and their future at stake in this race. That’s kind of the reason the whole film is building up to what becomes an almost hour long race of many chapters and many adventures, and the lead trading many times. Beautiful tradition at Le Mans that’s long since passed is that all the drivers start on the opposite side of the road from their cars. I thought this was a really unique opportunity to stage a kind of start of a race in a different way with each driver uncontained by the shell of their car, just left with their own thoughts standing there on the side of the road moments before they have to leap in the cars, turn the ignition, and begin what will be a 24-hour endurance test for them in the vehicle. [MUSIC PLAYING] [ANNOUNCER SPEAKING FRENCH] This next shot was a bear to get, but one I really wanted to get in one piece, which is feeling all the drivers leaping in and pulling out. What makes it difficult? Well, we shot with real cars, not digital ones. So getting 25 expert drivers to drive vintage and semi-vintage cars pulling out all in unison from the stands with 400 extras, is a challenge. And of course, the light’s beautiful. We waited for the right moment to do the shot. All of that to create a kind of moment of expectation as this race begins. “What happened to Miles?” [MUSIC PLAYING, TIRES SCREECHING] One of the very true and kind of interesting facts of the race that I wanted to very much replicate was that Ken Miles in his very first lap had a malfunction immediately with the door of his car. He couldn’t shut it. So he’s driving in excess of 150 miles an hour on a track with a door that won’t shut, and is already after— preparing for this race and preparing this car for so long, running into trouble in the most mundane of ways. You might notice that I’m shooting this sequence very much from the point of view of the driver or very close to the road. My goal was to somehow tell the story of an auto race, but not emulate the coverage you see on sports shows, but to put you much more behind the wheel and on the track so that you’re feeling much more what these drivers feel. Not only the harrowing nature of the speed and the thrills and the danger, but also the adrenaline and the excitement and the sense of even a kind of perfection that they’re chasing when the driving is going right for them. “Where the hell is Ken?” “I don’t know.” The actual work of the visual effects team in this sequence is much less about the cars and much more about the stands. We built about a football field length of grandstand, but obviously I couldn’t afford to shoot every day with 20,000 people in the stands, so the work of our many visual effects people are extending our backgrounds to the horizon and also populating the stands. “The bloody door won’t close. All right, all right.” I kind of saw this movie as a ‘Saving Private Ryan’ in reverse. It’s much more of a drama, I think, than many people expect when they see the film for 3/4 of the film, and we put almost all our resources into giving you kind of pretty intense action sequence at the third act of the film. “Go, go, go.” [TIRES SCREECHING, ENGINE REVVING]

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By A.O. Scott

Quick : Who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966 ?

If you know the answer without Googling, then I probably don’t have to sell you on “Ford v Ferrari,” James Mangold ’s nimble and crafty reconstruction of a storied moment in the annals of auto racing. You will probably go in prepared to spot torque differentials and historical discrepancies that escaped my notice. (Please let me know what you find.) If, on the other hand, you are (like me) a bit of a motor-sport ignoramus, then you might want to stay away from web-search spoilers and let the film surprise you.

It is, all in all, a pleasant surprise. Partly because Christian Bale and Matt Damon , the lead actors, are really good, and are supported by a fine cast that includes Tracy Letts in one of the best and least-expected crying scenes of the year. And partly because the car stuff — in the garage and on the track — is crisply filmed and edited, offering a reminder that movies and automobiles have a natural affinity and a lot of shared history. From the Keystone Kops days to “ The Fast and the Furious ,” some of the best motion in motion pictures has come from gasoline-powered vehicles.

But “Ford v Ferrari,” written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller , pushes the connection further, suggesting subtle but unmistakable links between racing and filmmaking as aesthetic and economic propositions. Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles , the car designer and driver played by Damon and Bale, are risk-hungry free spirits gambling with someone else’s money, unruly individualists who nonetheless depend on the good will of a large corporation.

The conflict alluded to in the title — between the assembly lines of Detroit and the artisanal workshops of Modena, Italy, for supremacy in the racing world — is a bit of a red herring. The real struggle is between the managers and bureaucrats of the Ford Motor Company and the mavericks whose work rolls out onto the track bearing the Ford logo. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Carroll and Ken as filmmakers fighting with studio suits for creative control.

They are, in any case, cool guys of a particular vintage, avatars of a salty, clean-cut, old-style masculinity that is enjoying a somewhat improbable vogue these days. Their effort to build a Le Mans-winning racecar for Ford is an engineering challenge similar in ambition to the Apollo program commemorated in Damien Chazelle ’s “First Man,” though smaller in scale. The chalk-and-cheese friendship between Carroll, a solid, unflappable Texan, and Ken, a spidery, easily flapped Englishman, might remind you of the bond between Brad Pitt’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”

Like those movies, this one embraces a view of the ’60s in which the square American mainstream is where the action is. Well, not every kind of action. If “Ford v Ferrari,” with its loose-limbed narrative rhythm and its love of grease and noise, had been made a few years after the events it depicts, it might have starred someone like Steve McQueen, Robert Redford or even Burt Reynolds — actors who infused whatever else they were doing onscreen with a frank, sometimes aggressive sexuality. Damon and Bale, both charismatic movie stars, don’t put out quite the same kind of erotic magnetism, and their characters are decidedly not tomcats or horndogs. Ken is the picture of uxoriousness, devoted to his sighing, supportive wife, Mollie (Caitriona Balfe ), and their son, Peter ( Noah Jupe ), who idolizes his dad. Carroll, as far as we know, has no personal life at all.

movie review ford v ferrari

I’m not complaining, just taking note of a shift in mores. Onscreen and maybe off, ambition has taken the place of lust. Work is the new sex. And work — its pleasures and frustrations, the interference of bosses and the camaraderie of colleagues — is what propels “Ford v Ferrari.”

Carroll, a former Le Mans champion who gave up competitive driving for health reasons, knows Ken, who runs a struggling repair shop in Los Angeles, from the American racing circuit. The two of them take up a commission bestowed by Henry Ford II (the wonderful Letts). His family business is threatened by the doughtiness of its products, which restless young baby boomers don’t want to buy. Beating Ferrari at Le Mans will be part of a rebranding strategy that also includes the introduction of the sporty Mustang.

The Italians are foils — old-world artisans and Machiavellian schemers whose ethos is embodied by the company patriarch, Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone ). Carroll and Ken don’t have much to do with their rivals before the race itself, tangling instead with Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal ), a frustrated semi-visionary in the ranks of the Ford executives, and Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas ), who is given control of the company’s racing program.

Beebe, with his side-parted hair, his boxy suits and his unctuous grin, is the designated villain, with a special animus against Ken, who is evidently “not a Ford man.” Carroll is caught in the middle, since he is technically Ken’s boss and the person Ford has, somewhat reluctantly, decided to trust. The boardroom intrigue enlivens the raceway drama, and vice versa.

“Ford v Ferrari” is no masterpiece, but it is — to invoke a currently simmering debate — real cinema, the kind of solid, satisfying, nonpandering movie that can seem endangered nowadays. (I should note that Mangold’s résumé includes “Logan” and “The Wolverine,” two of the more interesting superhero movies of the last decade.) To put it in the simplest terms: You may not think you care who won at Le Mans in 1966, but for two and a half hours, you will.

Ford v Ferrari

Rated PG-13. Strong language and fast driving. Running time: 2 hours 32 minutes.

An earlier version of a capsule summary with this review misstated the type of racing the movie is about. It is car racing, not Grand Prix racing. 

How we handle corrections

A.O. Scott is the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Matt Damon in Ford v Ferrari.

Ford v Ferrari review – motor-racing drama gets stuck in first gear

Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in a handsome-looking but dull account of the rivalry between the US and Italian car-makers

F ord v Ferrari is a great-looking, handsomely produced but tiringly acted and inert sports drama about two good ol’ boys from the self-admiring world of motor racing – which a character here wryly calls “turning left for four hours”. This picture goes straight ahead for two and a half.

Based on a true story, it is crammed with unearned emotional moments and factory-built male characters whose dedication to their sport we are expected to find adorable and heroic by turns. This is a standard-issue, middleweight biopic-type film, which comes complete with the now mandatory three factual sentences over the closing credits and the black-and-white photographs of the real-life people involved looking less attractive than the Hollywood stars who played them. James Mangold directs, from a serviceable original script by playwright Jez Butterworth , John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller.

Cup holder … Christian Bale as driver Ken Miles.

A relaxed Matt Damon brings his familiar, untroubled boyish charm to the role of Caroll Shelby, the racing-driver-turned-designer who was hired by Ford in the late 60s to put together a car and a team that would defeat Ferrari, those arrogant Italian artisans who presumed to think that their tiny little outfit had an artistry and flair superior to the corporate mass production of Ford.

Christian Bale plays Ken Miles, the difficult, impulsive, grumpy but brilliant Brit hired by Shelby as his star driver – to the irritation of the pointy-headed, bean-counting suits at Ford, who want an obedient team player. Tracy Letts plays Henry Ford Jr with gusto and Josh Lucas plays Leo Beebe, his creepy assistant. Jon Bernthal does what he can with the underwritten and underimagined role of Lee Iacocca , the Ford executive whose idea it evidently was in the first place for Ford to go into the glamorous but costly world of motor racing.

The person with the most thankless role is Caitriona Balfe , who plays Miles’s adoring wife, Mollie. She doesn’t have that much to do, and this is very much a guys’ film. At one point, an irritable Beebe tells Shelby that Miles has the wrong attitude to be their driver and Shelby derisively replies that they could get some poster boy if he’d like and adds: “Hell, we can set up Doris Day behind the wheel if all you wanna do is lose!” That’s a rather ungallant line that reveals a little bit more about the film’s attitude to women than it intended.

Bale’s performance is the polar opposite of Damon’s laid-back impersonation of Matt Damon . It is an actorly display: a spiky, gawky, angular and borderline ridiculous collection of mannerisms, an accent that mixes Pete Postlethwaite with a bit of Noddy Holder and some body language that, at times, reminded me of Jack Douglas from the Carry On team. Bale drives along muttering, “Giddy-ap!” (Jodie Kidd did something similar behind the wheel when she was on Top Gear.)

The film comes to life briefly in the jolts and crashes that occur when fiercely competitive drivers bash into one another, and we realise that, unlike many other sports, motor racing is life-threateningly dangerous and was especially so in the 60s. So why are they doing it? Why is Miles pursuing something that could widow his beloved wife and make his son, Peter (Noah Jupe), fatherless. What has it all been for? The glory of the Ford motor company? Selfish speed thrills? It’s a mystery that is unsolved at the end of this blandly sentimental movie, which can’t reach out beyond the petrolhead fanbase.

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Ford v Ferrari

Christian Bale and Matt Damon in Ford v Ferrari (2019)

American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 2... Read all American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966. American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.

  • James Mangold
  • Jez Butterworth
  • John-Henry Butterworth
  • Jason Keller
  • Christian Bale
  • Jon Bernthal
  • 1.6K User reviews
  • 365 Critic reviews
  • 81 Metascore
  • 26 wins & 88 nominations total

Official Trailer 2

  • Carroll Shelby

Christian Bale

  • Lee Iacocca

Caitríona Balfe

  • Mollie Miles
  • (as Caitriona Balfe)

Josh Lucas

  • Peter Miles

Tracy Letts

  • Henry Ford II

Remo Girone

  • Enzo Ferrari

Ray McKinnon

  • Phil Remington

JJ Feild

  • Charlie Agapiou

Corrado Invernizzi

  • Franco Gozzi

Joe Williamson

  • Ford Executive - Ian

Christopher Darga

  • John Holman
  • Al 'Gus' Scussel

Emil Beheshti

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  • Trivia In preparation for his role, Christian Bale took race driving lessons at the Bondurant High Performance Driving School. As it happened, the founder of the school had been a friend of Ken Miles. So in addition to the driving, Bale also got to hear stories of the 1960s racing scene. Bale's instructor and the film's stunt coordinator, Robert Nagle later stated; "he's hands down the best actor I've ever trained."
  • Goofs Ken Miles' winning margin in the 1966 Daytona 24 Hours was 8 laps over the second Shelby entered Ford. The Holman & Moody entry driven by Walt Hansgen finished in third place, 1 lap further down.

Carroll Shelby : [narration] There's a point at 7,000 RPM... where everything fades. The machine becomes weightless. Just disappears. And all that's left is a body moving through space and time. 7,000 RPM. That's where you meet it. You feel it coming. It creeps up on you, close in your ear. Asks you a question. The only question that matters. Who are you?

  • Crazy credits Epilogue:  "Revered by racing fans worldwide, Ken Miles was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame. Carroll Shelby became one of the most successful and celebrated sports car designers in history.  The Ford GT40, developed by Shelby and Miles, won Le Mans in 1966, 1968 and 1969.  It remains the only American built car ever to win the 24 hours of Le Mans."
  • Connections Featured in CTV News at Noon Toronto: Episode dated 9 September 2019 (2019)
  • Soundtracks Hold On Written by David Brian Gonzalez Performed by The Paladins

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  • November 15, 2019 (United States)
  • United States
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  • Savannah, Georgia, USA (Circuit de la Sarthe)
  • Chernin Entertainment
  • TSG Entertainment
  • Turnpike Films
  • See more company credits at IMDbPro
  • $97,600,000 (estimated)
  • $117,624,357
  • $31,474,958
  • Nov 17, 2019
  • $225,508,210

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  • Runtime 2 hours 32 minutes
  • Dolby Atmos
  • Dolby Digital

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Film Review: Christian Bale and Matt Damon in ‘Ford v Ferrari’

Playing colorful 1960s racing icons, Christian Bale and Matt Damon try to convince their bosses at Ford that the company can win Le Mans in this Horatio Alger-esque American success story.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Ford v Ferrari

Most racing movies are about rivals, but not so “Ford v Ferrari,” which, despite its competition-oriented title, is actually the story of two friends, Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles (played by Matt Damon and Christian Bale ), who partnered with the Ford Motor Co. to beat Italian sportscar designer Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Shelby had bested Ferrari once before, winning Le Mans in 1959 behind the wheel of an Aston Martin, but was benched soon after on account of a bum ticker, so he turned to his best driver to develop and commandeer the car that would do the feat. Miles was more of a wild card, a British tank commander who’d survived World War II but went on to become a daredevil racer, pushing his cars to the limit on the track. Miles once quipped, “I’d rather die in a racing car than get eaten up by cancer.”

Before Miles met his unnatural end, he and Shelby made history. Watching Bale and Damon channel those two speed freaks in all of their surly, testosterone-spitting glory is a reminder of how much fun it was to watch Bale play a similar character opposite Mark Wahlberg in “The Fighter.” The best sports movies aren’t so much about the sport as they are the personalities, and these two go big with their performances — Damon in a 10-gallon hat, sounding like Tommy Lee Jones, and Bale all gangly and slump-shouldered, playing the man with nothing to lose — as their characters face greater obstacles back home than they do on the famous French course.

If that sounds like a hoot, then what “Walk the Line” director James Mangold has done with “Ford v Ferrari” will wow you, balancing the burnt-rubber thrill of the sport with scenes in which the two men butt heads with their corporate overlords about how to get the job done. But that description also reveals what’s wrong with this movie, in which Ferrari doesn’t feature nearly enough, and the main conflict seems to be between the dynamic racing duo and the American moneybags who hired them.

In the end, Mangold and his three screenwriters — Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller — have made a movie about how Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) set out to buy a racing title, and then nearly sabotaged it by getting his marketing department involved. Frankly, that’s thinking like a studio filmmaker and not a great storyteller, since such debacles happen all the time in showbiz but hardly matter to the folks at home: The suits get involved and ruin the picture, or else drop a fortune on the Oscar campaign, spending their way to a statue that should have gone to someone more deserving.

Both companies, Ford and Ferrari, are hurting when the movie opens. The American brand is having trouble attracting young buyers. Enter the Mustang — a beautiful set of wheels that Miles doesn’t take seriously — and a bold plan to buy out the Italian sportscar manufacturer. But Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) doesn’t go for it, upsetting Henry Ford II (the assembly-line genius’ insecure grandson) with harsh words about how he does business (the Italian cars are made by hand, and sit in a class of their own). Now his pride’s on the line, and Ford, who was threatening to shut down his factory in his introductory scene, is willing to spend whatever it takes to break Ferrari’s winning streak at Le Mans.

One doesn’t have to be a racing aficionado to know where this David-v.-Goliath story is headed — except, in this equation, isn’t Ford playing both roles? The company is by far the behemoth in this equation, but is also granted underdog status because it’s never built a car that could best a Ferrari. The first two years were a bust (one in conveniently compressed movie time), and yet, thanks to Shelby and Miles’ efforts, the car manufacturer finally has something to show for it: the GT40 Mark I, which is fast enough to set speed records, even though it didn’t win the race.

The script makes it sound like those know-nothing Ford bureaucrats — led by petty VP Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas, looking mal-coiffed and knickers-twisted), who been given the reins of the racing program — were against sending the hot-tempered Miles to Le Mans, and maybe they were, but there’s a little too much creative license at play in the version of history the movie presents. Miles did go to Le Mans in 1965, where he lost to Ferrari, and it wasn’t until 1966 that the team started to win.

Although Mangold re-creates stretches of Shelby’s 1959 Le Mans victory and Miles winning a non-Ford-sponsored race at Willow Springs to whet audience’s appetites early on, the only thing louder than the engines were the snores at the film’s Telluride premiere. Maybe it was all the formula family drama with Miles’ wife Mollie (Caitrona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe) that bored those overheard napping. In any case, they seemed to sit up for the final stretch, when Mangold’s filmmaking most impresses.

Still, there’s something missing from a glossy big-screen rally that we get from the real thing, where the possibility that someone could crash and burn at any time supplies a kind of morbid tension to the sport. Compare it with classic racing movies — James Garner and Steve McQueen reportedly did their own driving in “Grand Prix” (1966) and “Le Mans” (1970), respectively, as did Tom Cruise 20 years later on “Days of Thunder” — and “Ford v Ferrari” looks like Pixar’s “Cars” or the Wachowskis’ “Speed Racer,” despite the fact no CGI was used during these scenes.

That brings the attention back to the acting, which is where the movie excels. Damon’s role may not be as showy, but he gets most of the meaty confrontations, including one in which he locks Beebe in his office and takes Ford for a breakneck ride. Bale has shed the weight he gained to play Dick Cheney in “Vice,” working with the fact that some scenes call for him to use his whole body, at which point there’s a clownishness to his movements, while others play out across a face half-hidden by helmet and sunglasses, the embodiment of focus.

The real Miles sounded like David Niven and spoke with a polite, distinguished British accent, but that’s gotta go for his interpretation of the character to work. Bale sees Miles as a hothead, and the scene where he tosses a wrench at Shelby is a keeper, topped only by the fight that breaks out between them across the street from his house. The movie ends on that same corner, energetic but overlong at two and a half hours, and yet, we’ve traveled the distance with this pair during that time. The race doesn’t go entirely as you might expect, and in a melancholy twist, earlier this year, Ford terminated its factory Le Mans GT program, launched on the 50th anniversary to the events shown here.

Reviewed at Telluride Film Festival, Aug. 30, 2019. (Also in Toronto Film Festival — Gala Presentations.) Running time: 152 MIN.

  • Production: A Twentieth Century Fox release and presentation, in association with TSG Entertainment, of a Chernin Entertainment, Turnpike Films production. Producers: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, James Mangold. Executive producers: Kevin Halloran, Dani Bernfeld, Michael Mann. Co-producers: Addam Somner, Aaron Downing.
  • Crew: Director: James Mangold. Camera (color): Phedon Papamichael. Editors: Michael McCusker, Andrew Buckland. Screenplay: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller. Music: Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders.
  • With: Matt Damon, Christian Bale , Jon Bernthal, Caitrona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon, JJ Field, Jack McMullen.

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Ford v Ferrari Reviews

movie review ford v ferrari

It is a very solid film, which has both entertainment and emotion. Through an excellent script it will manage to keep the viewer expectant and intrigued. Its greatest success is that both car fans and non-car fans can really feel the adrenaline.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Jan 27, 2024

movie review ford v ferrari

FORD V FERRARI is an extremely entertaining and intelligent film made with the same type of drive for excellence that possessed the creators Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby and Enzo Ferrari and gives the viewer a window into the creative mind and spirit...

Full Review | Dec 28, 2022

movie review ford v ferrari

The best thing about Ford v Ferrari is how effective it is in injecting its adrenaline. Christian Bale is incredible in one of the movies with the most impressive sound design I've ever heard. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 21, 2022

movie review ford v ferrari

...a rousing racing drama that doesn’t shirk on the human element.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2022

movie review ford v ferrari

Mangold transitions flawlessly into the period and subject matter, as one might expect. He's among our most talented journeymen directors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 23, 2022

movie review ford v ferrari

James Mangold proves to be one of the better working directors in the business today with Ford v Ferrari. The film features an impeccable cast, led by an excellent performance by Christian Bale.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Feb 20, 2022

movie review ford v ferrari

Episode 53: Honey Boy / Earthquake Bird / Ford v Ferrari

Full Review | Original Score: 80/100 | Dec 1, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Ford V Ferrari is a thrilling crowd-pleaser that works whether you know the outcome of the story or whether it's all new to you.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 20, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

It is an Oscar bait-y movie... The whole cast brings it together.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Ford v Ferrari, the latest from James Mangold, is infused with love of the cinematic experience.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

The sound design is almost flawless, and even if you're not a fan of racing movies, this one is for film lovers all over the planet.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Sep 5, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Whether or not you're a racing enthusiast, Ford v Ferrari pleases the crowd, taking the racing genre to new heights. Still, it's the human elements of the film...

Full Review | Aug 12, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Driven by a pair of amazing performances and white knuckle racing sequences.

Full Review | Original Score: 10 | Jun 24, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Like an unreliable car, Ford v Ferrari works only in spurts.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Ultimately, Ford v Ferrari is an entertaining yarn, but possibly a movie that'll only make multiple laps around the track if you're a petrolhead.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 25, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Ford v Ferrari could have been better, delving into more specifics for those of us who aren't intimately familiar with the history. But the performances of the stacked cast and the intensity of the various racing scenes make up for that lack.

Full Review | Feb 17, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

A thrilling, playful middle finger to corporate conservatism.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 16, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

Le Mans '66 is a polished film about a race to win, not about a race.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 9, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

[Director James Mangold] humanizes this true story, making it interesting for those with extensive car knowledge and palatable for others, like this reviewer, who wouldn't be able to locate the engine with a gun to her head.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2021

movie review ford v ferrari

It's not often a movie breaks no ground whatsoever, is chock full of clichés, is two-and-a-half hours long, and somehow still finds a way to be completely entertaining.

Full Review | Jan 28, 2021

Ford v Ferrari Review

Christian bale and matt damon play the masterminds behind ford’s efforts to defeat ferrari at le mans ’66..

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movie review ford v ferrari

Ford v. Ferrari Gallery

Matt Damon and Christian Bale in Ford v. Ferrari

Like a race car without an engine, Ford v Ferrari looks good on the surface, but fails to motor for its 150-minutes. There’s fun to be had watching the Ford executives clash, and the driving scenes are shot with real artistry and skill, but they’re interspersed with scenes of true inertia; of Ken Miles listening to the radio while fixing his car, or having yet another argument with his wife. So while Le Mans might be the most exciting race on the planet – as we’re told over and over again, ad infinitum – a film about that race is a very different proposition, with Ford v Ferrari lacking urgency and thrills, and instead simply chugging along in underwhelming fashion.

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‘ford v ferrari’: film review | telluride 2019.

THR review: Christian Bale and Matt Damon play 1960s racing legends Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby, respectively, in 'Ford v Ferrari,' James Mangold's drama about Ford Motor Company's efforts to top Ferrari.

By Todd McCarthy

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The characters can seldom compete with the cars in auto racing movies, but that’s not the case with Ford v Ferrari, a full-bodied and exciting true-life story in which the men behind the wheels are just as dynamic as the machines they drive. Fronted by fine lead performances by Christian Bale and Matt Damon as, respectively, racing legends Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby, this is a well-built vehicle in every respect that should make a good run through theaters and have a substantial home-viewing afterlife.

This is a racing saga with strong dramatic and historical underpinnings. In the world of international racing heading into the 1960s, nobody could touch Ferrari, the ne plus ultra of fast carmakers. During a company downturn, Henry Ford II and his lieutenant Lee Iacocca, who played a big role in introducing the Mustang and Ford Pinto, got it into their heads to produce a race car that could displace the Italians, which seemed like a joke at the time. But they made it happen.

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Release date: Nov 15, 2019

Applying solid craftsmanship of their own, screenwriters Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller have hammered together a solid three-act structure that invites quick viewer investment in some hard-nosed but likable people, provides combative character dynamics among very competitive drivers and executives and gives the central figure, Miles, welcome full treatment when it comes to his racing smarts, ambitions and family life.

With director James Mangold showing a sure hand throughout, some amusing early scenes contrast the corporate culture at Ferrari and Ford. Dedicated to quality, prestige and class, Enzo Ferrari presides over his empire like a cross between a medieval lord and a mafia boss and looks down on Ford as a prince would a peasant.  If anything, however, Ford is an even more terrifying figure, a large man who makes underlings quake in his presence. Tracy Letts is fantastic in this role; when he’s onscreen, you can only watch him.

However, Ford can sometimes surprise with his edicts, and he instructs his ruthless protégé Lee Iacocca to do whatever is necessary to give the company a winner. The interlude of corporate interplay in which the Ford team travels to Italy to propose a merger bursts with humorous absurdity, as the presumption that these two cultures could ever co-exist under one roof is shown for what it is.

Appealingly, the men who might be able to give life to Ford’s dream are quickly drawn with both virtues and flaws plain for the eye to see. After a successful racing career of his own, Shelby embarked on a variety of automotive projects but signed onto Ford’s project of creating a hot car that could win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

For his part, Shelby endured any number of speed bumps in enlisting Miles for the wacky but enticing Ford project. At the outset, Miles, a British émigré, is working as a lowly mechanic in Los Angeles, where he lives with his spry wife Mollie (a luminously sympathetic Caitriona Balfe) and engaging young son Peter (Noah Jupe). It’s not hard to deduce that Miles hasn’t gotten further in life because he’s a temperamental hard-head, easily riled and prone to rough stuff; he and Shelby at one point get into a knock-down, drag-out fight.

But Miles is talented and really knows his cars, so he and Shelby become Ford’s unlikely ticket to racing greatness. The drama’s mid-section reveals the hard knocks and combustion, both mechanical and human, that went into the development of a car that could beat the Italians, and how it got done in one year.

The film’s lively dynamics owe much to the bristly nature of nearly every relationship and interaction in the film. Miles is an unpredictable live wire with everyone except his wife and son; Shelby always seems to be juggling more balls than can reasonably be kept aloft at any given moment; the demanding Ford and Iacocca keep everyone off-balance and on their toes; and the looming deadlines and danger inherent in the profession itself provide a constant sense of unease over both professional and personal mortality. An excellent interlude in which Miles does test runs on the tarmac at LAX provides insights into what goes into a driver’s relationship with his car.

Naturally, the third act is devoted to the 1966 24-hour French driving marathon, in which two drivers take turns piloting their cars through day, night and, in this case, no small amount of rain. It’s a race Shelby had won in 1959, while Miles had already prevailed in the current year’s Daytona and Sebring competitions. It’s a difficult race to dramatize because of its length and changing drivers, and this one in particular possesses its own peculiar problem because of the way it finished. But it also has its enormous satisfactions, and the entire team that put it together must be saluted.

Bale and Damon seem enthusiastically immersed in the colorful characters they play here and they spar well together very engagingly, both when in cahoots and at odds.

The practices and attitudes, if not the ability, of big industry are placed in a pretty withering light, albeit with frequent wit, and all hands here have put in strong jobs of work that pay off onscreen.

movie review ford v ferrari

Production companies: Chernin Entertainment, Turnpike Films Distributor: Fox Cast: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Caitriona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon, JJ Field, Jack McMullen Director: James Mangold Screenwriters: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Jason Keller Producers: Peter Chernin, James Mangold, Jenno Topping Executive producers: Dani Bernfeld, Kevin Halloran, Michael Mann Director of photography: Phedon Papamichael Production designer: Francois Audouy Costume designer: Daniel Orlandi Editors: Michael McCusker, Andrew Buckland Music: Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders Visual effects supervisor: Olivier Dumont Casting: Ronna Kress Venue: Telluride Film Festival

Rated PG-13, 152 minutes

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Movie Reviews

Review: 'ford v ferrari'.

LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan talks with NPR's David Greene and reviews the new film Ford v Ferrari , starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

I got to warn you here. If you go see the new movie, "Ford V Ferrari," in a theater, get ready for your seat to vibrate as if you're flying on a racetrack at 200 miles an hour.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FORD V FERRARI")

MATT DAMON: (As Carroll Shelby) You ready?

TRACY LETTS: (As Henry Ford II) Hit it.

(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE ENGINE REVVING)

GREENE: It is the story of the Detroit automaker deciding in 1966 to build a race car and compete with Ferrari in a legendary race in France. There is speed, there is action, but this is also the story of two men, played by Matt Damon and Christian Bale, who hold the keys to Ford's success here. MORNING EDITION film critic Kenneth Turan is here to talk about it. Hey, Kenny.

KENNETH TURAN, BYLINE: Hey, David. How you doing?

GREENE: I'm good. Are you a car guy?

TURAN: I am not a car guy. I grew up in Brooklyn. My parents did not own a car. I didn't drive till I was in my 20s. So cars are far from my, you know, my range of experience.

GREENE: But you like a good car movie?

TURAN: I love a good movie. And the thing about "Ford V Ferrari," it's a classic Hollywood movie. If you love the movies, if you love the old silent moviemaking, if you're one of these people who say, why don't they make them like they used to, well, they made them like they used to with this one.

GREENE: What do you mean by that? What makes it classic?

TURAN: First of all, it's very dramatic. It's great characters. It's strong acting. It's a strong plot. It's very involving. It's made in a way that's very exciting. The editing is crisp. The sound, as you mentioned, is terrific.

GREENE: Bold.

TURAN: It pulls you in. Everything you love about a film, this film does.

GREENE: You know, when it comes to the plot, I sort of expected this to be a story about, you know, Ford versus Ferrari, American pride versus Italian swagger. A lot of it is about an American company, Ford.

TURAN: Yeah. You know, there's more conflicts in this movie than we usually get. I mean, first of all, even Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles, the two main people in the film, who are a team, they have conflicts with each other. Then they have conflicts with the people at Ford, who are normally their sponsors. So there's all kinds of conflict going on all the time.

GREENE: You learn about the culture in a corporation like Ford.

TURAN: Yeah. They very much talk about that. It's fascinating. You know, Henry Ford II, who they call The Deuce...

GREENE: Right.

TURAN: ...You know, is very much in charge. He's an old style, kind of corporate autocrat. But underneath him, there's Lee Iacocca. There's a man named Leo Beebe. There's fights about what Ford should be doing, who has The Deuce's ear. I mean, again, there's all these subplots going on that just add to the excitement.

GREENE: Matt Damon plays the carmaker who's hired by Ford, Christian Bale, the driver. How do their characters work?

TURAN: Well, you know, they're both fascinating as individuals, and their relationship is equally involving. They're both iconoclasts. They both go against the mold. But because they're iconoclasts, even though they're good friends, they battle with each other. They have different ideas about what should be done. And there's this constant, wonderful dramatic tension in the film. The only quiet moments - and I know you're a fan of this, too - is the moments between Ken Miles and his wife.

GREENE: Yes. Ken Miles is the driver, played by Christian Bale. Matt Damon, Christian Bale - this is a movie about these two people who are at the center of Ford's efforts here. But there is a third character who really helps make this movie.

TURAN: Yes. They made a very shrewd decision, and they executed it very well. Irish actress named Caitriona Balfe plays Miles' wife, Mollie. And she is able to stand up to him in the most wonderful ways. I mean, I was thinking of it this morning. It was like Bogart and Bacall. They have this great back-and-forth relationship. She is really right there holding your attention. The scenes between the two of them are some of the best in the film.

GREENE: Christian Bale, seeing him was shocking. I mean, his last role was as Dick Cheney.

TURAN: Yes.

GREENE: I mean, he does - he looks like a different person.

TURAN: He lost 70 pounds between Dick Cheney and this role, and his face looks angular. He's almost like a bird of prey. He just has kind of intensified himself and turned himself into Ken Miles in a way that, really, only the greatest actors can do.

GREENE: The movie is "Ford V Ferrari." Talking about it here with Kenneth Turan, who reviews movies for MORNING EDITION and for The Los Angeles Times. Kenny, always good to see you.

TURAN: Great to see you, David.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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‘Ford v Ferrari’ Review: Damon, Bale and the Need for Speed

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Vroom! You can feel the power thrumming under James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari — and that’s a shock because this thunderously exciting true story is based on a stuffy business proposition. Back in the 1960s, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) determined to beat Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) at his own game by building a hot, fast race car — the GT40 — that could win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, pitting American crass against Italian class.

Luckily, Mangold fuels his true-life plot with enough flesh-and-blood action to leave to leave you dizzy. Matt Damon is Texas native Carroll Shelby, a former Le Mans champion — he was a co-driver in the Aston Martin that won the race in 1959 — brought on to design Ford’s rocket. Damon, that rare movie star with an actor’s ability to suggest a character’s inner life, catches Shelby’s Lone Star bluster, the quick mind behind it, and the deep-seated feelings he mostly hides about the heart condition that keeps him out of the driver’s seat.

It’s Shelby who persuades the suits to hire Brit driver Ken Miles ( Christian Bale ), a hothead who does things his way or not at all. Bale, considerably slimmed down from his role as Dick Cheney in Vice, has the lean-and-hungry look of a driver built for speed. As ever, Bale is astonishing, portraying Miles with scorching wit and staggering physicality. Even wearing a helmet, Bale lets you exactly what’s going in the mind of Miles. He doesn’t make a false move on screen. The conflict Miles has with Shelby, chiefly money driven, doesn’t mean the two men don’t deep friendship, even when it comes to wrench-throwing and a knock-down, drag-out fight in Miles’ yard.

Miles prefers a low-paying job as a Los Angeles mechanic to kissing corporate ass, repped here by Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas is sleaze incarnate). Ford’s right-hand man has a knack for riling Miles. Shelby exacts a kind of revenge when he takes Ford himself for a jaw-dropping spin around the track to teach the old man about the true power of a racing engine. The scene is hilarious, allowing Letts to go for broke. But even when he’s not sitting scared shitless in a racecar’s passenger seat, the Pulitizer-winning playwright is superb at finding the wounded pride in Ford who resents being No. 2 to his famous granddaddy. If he can’t buy Ferrari (he tries and fails), he intends to beat him at his own game and risk the family business to prove it.

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And it’s intriguing that the script for Ford v Ferrari is also the work of a playwright, Jez Butterworth, who won the Tony this year for The Ferryman. Jez, who wrote the screenplay with his brother John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, has a knack for the dynamics of human interaction caught in the clutches of American imperialism.

A few cliches do sneak in, mostly in the home life scenes between Miles, his wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) and their son Peter (Noah Jupe). But Balfe, so soulfully romantic on TV’s Outlander, and Jupe, a wonder in Honey Boy, have the goods to make us understand and care. Mangold has proven skills as a director of actors — think Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line, Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted and Hugh Jackman in Logan — and his intuitive guidance of the cast here can go from subtle to eruptive with no bumps in the road between.

It takes a few failed tries before Shelby and Miles are ready to show what they’ve got at Le Mans in 1966. But getting there really is half the fun, as is getting to know the characters as more than instruments charged with making it first to the finish line. By then, Mangold has us in his grip with no intention of letting go. The thrill-a-minute race scenes are shot by the great Phedon Papamichael ( 3:10 to Yuma, Nebraska ) with an eye for catching every flash of beauty and terror. Mission accomplished.

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Ford V. Ferrari Is the Best Kind of Throwback

movie review ford v ferrari

By K. Austin Collins

christian bale and matt damon

James Mangold ’s Ford V. Ferrari has the makings of a hit: fast cars, a top-of-the-line cast headed up by Christian Bale and Matt Damon , male friendship, male rivalry, explosions, pulse-quickening racing scenes fit to leave the audience spent. Someone in your life is sure to joke that it’s a “dad movie,” and the charge sticks.

But much like last year’s A Star Is Born , it’s also a recent example of Hollywood doing what it’s historically done well: taking a big story, giving it a fair budget, casting genuine Hollywood stars in roles that don’t require capes, and simply entertaining the shit out of us. Somewhat ironically, the industry’s decade-long pivot toward franchise fare has meant that there’s now plenty of room, and probably plenty of appetite, for competent filmmakers to tell more old-school stories.

Mangold, director of Logan and The Wolverine , is no stranger to franchises—but his more impressive work is here. Bale plays Ken Miles, a British-born racer and engineer with a genius for speed. He’s a bit of a hot-head with more than his share of authority issues, perhaps because he can genuinely say he’s better than everyone else: a better driver, a more sensitive engineer, a man with an intuition for vehicles that’s as impressive as it is mysterious. He’s a complete original—which means he’s exactly the kind of guy whose skills a corporate power might want, and also a complete mismatch for any such corporation. He’s too “difficult”; he won’t play by the rules.

Ford V. Ferrari dramatizes what happens when a cautiously capitalistic company like Ford Motors taps a guy like Ken to help build its new racing program. The film is set in 1966, when Ford is under the stewardship of Henry Ford II ( Tracy Letts ), whose company is looking to make itself seem sexy again. There’s a whole new generation of post-war, middle class adults to cater to, but the company has fallen behind. Enter young exec Lee Iacocca ( Jon Bernthal ) with a funny idea: Ford should go exotic. Ford should go to France to race Le Mans , which challenges drivers to compete for 24 straight hours.

The script, penned by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller , takes a tight, fascinating look at the ensuing clashes of culture and will, with racing and engineering hero Carroll Shelby ( Matt Damon ) playing the cool-tempered referee. In one corner, we have a company newly obsessed with its image (thanks, in part, to the insecurities of the boss) courting Shelby, the man with the vision to help the company build that image anew. In the other, we have hot-head Ken: the only man Shelby thinks has the smarts, the instincts, to both build the car Ford needs to beat seminal winner Ferrari on the racing circuit, and man that car.

The fun of Ford V. Ferrari —besides the races themselves, which are plenty and spacious and full of intricate psychological drama—is how thoroughly it leans into this tension. You would be crazy to side with Leo Beebe ( Josh Lucas ), the guy trying to reign Ken in and keep him off the track for his own petty reasons; you’d have to have a heart of stone not to fall for Ken, whom Bale charmingly, grittily brings to life with his trademark slickness and anger. This is what makes the movie so classically satisfying: it’s a David vs. Goliath story. You root for Ken because you root for individuals, for creative freedom, for people “sticking it to the man” (with cockney charm, no less.)

The broader world of the movie—which includes Ken’s wife Mollie ( Caitriona Balfe ) and son Peter ( Noah Jupe ), with brief detours to the Ferrari camp and a broad sense of Ford as a corporation full of men in suits—fleshes out its central conflict, makes it plausible and exciting. Mangold’s direction is more effective than original, but that’s the movie’s central virtue: it practically begs to be called “the kind of movie people don’t make anymore.”

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The racing scenes are demanding to the senses, enough that Mangold’s thoroughly imagined sound design, his smart visual pacing all sell you on the danger and exhaustion of the experience. He loves a great reaction shot, and the clench-jawed, cussing, greasy-faced Bale is more than game. You can imagine a version of this movie that’s entirely told from his cockpit, and no less dramatic for it.

Le Mans is a daylong competition, and a clear endpoint for the movie. That scene in itself is a cavalcade of drama, all of the film’s tensions and power plays distilled to in-the-moment betrayals and decisions that make us double down on our loyalties. And the actors, practical charm factories, give the movie the keen emotional hum it needs to make this stuff work. Ken and Carroll are old friends; their fist fights are love tussles, albeit genuinely violent. Bale and Damon and the rest of the cast do what we know movie stars can do: they give life to even the most questionable lines, make you root as much for the characters as for the abilities of the actors playing them.

Ford V. Ferrari is a good ride, and a good example of what so many people are thirsty for. Is it also an allegory? Keep your ears perked for lines about cars designed “by committee,” rather than by the likes of Ken—a story with parallels to the kinds of movies Hollywood currently sees fit to make. Ford isn’t exactly political, and its bark is perhaps outsize of its bite on that front. But it works. That’s its best argument, and clearest lesson.

K. Austin Collins

K. austin collins is a film critic for *vanity fair.*.

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Screen Rant

Ford v ferrari review: christian bale & matt damon go like heck, between its thrilling racing sequences and underlying commentary, ford v ferrari makes for an entertaining spin on the traditional sports biography..

On paper, a movie about the Ford company's efforts to defeat its rival Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans probably only sounds interesting to either racing enthusiasts and/or anyone who actually knows what a 24 Hours of Le Mans even is. Thankfully, the final film, Ford v Ferrari (which was titled Go Like Hell early on in development), transcends its biographical trappings to deliver an enjoyable viewing experience for gearheads and race-car novices alike. And with director James Mangold (of Walk the Line and Logan fame) calling the shots, the biopic is mostly successful in getting at the heart of what makes this story interesting - namely, the struggle between commercialism and creative integrity. Between its thrilling racing sequences and underlying commentary, Ford v Ferrari makes for an entertaining spin on the traditional sports biography.

Ford v Ferrari is set in motion when CEO Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) - acting on the advice of his VP, Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) - tries to buy Ferrari, only to be rebuffed by its founder, Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone), who knows he's only after Ferrari's world-famous racing program. Incensed, Ford II directs his own racing division to build a car that will beat Ferrari at the next 24 Hours of Le Mans (an event Ferrari has won for the last several years) in 1966. In order to do that, Iacocca turns to the retired racing legend and automotive engineer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and his own team, including his hot-headed race-car driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Can Shelby and Miles do the impossible and emerge victorious in this battle of David vs. Goliath vs. Goliath?

Matt Damon in Ford v Ferrari

At its core, the Ford v Ferrari script credited to Jason Keller ( Machine Gun Preacher ) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth ( Get on Up ) is part American corporate myth and part real-life story about a ragtag group of artists in their profession who're trying to stay true to their vision while working for a company that's far more concerned about public image and selling their products to the masses. Of the two, the latter element is more compelling than the former and gives the film a beating heart, even when it's all too apparent where the story is going next. Having spent much of his career directing within the Hollywood studio system, it's perhaps unsurprising that Mangold seems to really relate to Shelby's crew and their struggle to keep their own meddling bosses happy as they work around the clock to deliver what they believe is a solid product. And by zeroing in on their clash of egos with Ford's men, he's able to keep things engaging, in spite of the movie's clear-cut trajectory and occasionally patience-testing runtime.

It may stick firmly to the racetrack (sorry, these puns write themselves), but Ford v Ferrari knows what matters most are the people who come along for the journey. In this case, Damon and Bale have excellent chemistry as Shelby and Miles, and their dynamic (the former is very much the level-headed foil to his friend) gives the film much of its flavor, whether they're bonding over their shared passion for racing or coming to blows in what's typically a very funny fashion. Their personalities are well-complimented by those of Ford's business suits, with Letts and Bernthal doing excellent work as always and Josh Lucas bringing on the smarm as the Ford executive Leo Beebe (who proves to be the biggest thorn in Shelby and Miles' side). Caitriona Balfe and Noah Jupe are relegated to supporting roles as Miles' wife and son, yet their scenes with Bale offer a welcome glimpse at Miles' softer, family man persona.

Christian Bale as Ken Miles in Ford v. Ferrari

But of course, the race-car sequences and recreation of the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans are the primary attractions as much as anything else here, and (to its credit) Ford v Ferrari very much delivers the goods in this regard. Mangold and his DP Phedon Papamichael shoot these scenes with a steady hand, allowing viewers to actually see everything that's happening while still experiencing the sheer exhilaration that comes with being a body that's "moving through space and time" (as the film puts it). The movie's racing sequences combine practical stunt-driving with limited CGI, and the resulting spectacle is truly visceral in the way it captures the cacophony and exhaust-clogged environment of the race course. Ford v Ferrari never comes across as old-fashioned in these moments either, even releasing after highly-stylized true story racing dramas like Rush in recent years.

Between its (excessive?) running time and distinctly anti-franchise design, it feels like Ford v Ferrari might be Mangold's means of participating in his own David vs. Goliath vs. Goliath battle involving studios competing to release the next big crowd-pleaser at the box office (something that adds yet another layer of meta meaning to the whole film). Be that the case or not, he's all the same succeeded in delivering a very good sports biopic fueled by great acting and exciting car races. Perhaps even more impressively, he's made a movie about racing that has something to offer those who know little more (or care to know much more) about Ford and Ferrari other than they both sell cars. That alone is deserving of a victory lap.

Ford v Ferrari is now playing in U.S. theaters. It is 152 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for some language and peril.

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Ford v Ferrari Is an Old-fashioned Rouser

Portrait of David Edelstein

This review originally ran during the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year. We are republishing it as the film hits theaters this weekend.

In Ford v Ferrari , the director James Mangold doesn’t hover over the race cars that rocket along at 210, 220, 230 miles per hour and scorch around curves. Overhead shots wouldn’t suit his objective, which is to put you inside or right alongside the vehicles, so that you can’t — for a nanosecond — forget the drivers’ chances of becoming a smoking mash of tin and innards on the blacktop. There’s no defense against Mangold’s hyperkinetic style, but, fortunately, there doesn’t need to be. He doesn’t misuse his head-rattling techniques. He’s an honorable head-rattler. The movie is an old-fashioned rouser with a lot of new-fashioned virtuosity.

Based on a weirdly true story set in the 1960s, the movie centers on two charismatic purists, the legendary ex-racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and the rowdy, insolent Brit Ken Miles ( Christian Bale ), who’s a prodigy both behind the wheel and under the hood. It takes nearly half an hour to get the plot in fifth gear. After being rebuffed and insulted following a failed attempt to purchase the Italian company Ferrari to add hipster cred to his family-car image, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) vows to build his own race cars and crush the smug Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) in the 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans. Ford exec Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) reaches out to Shelby, who reaches out to Miles, whose penchant for insulting his wealthy but insufficiently auto-sensitive sports car customers has brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. With a blank check, the pair get busy hammering frames and shedding scores of pounds of engine parts.

It’s the most seductive of premises for an American audience: casting us Yanks as the underdog despite having more (ill-gotten) wealth than anyone in the world. One of the film’s cannier touches is creating a wide gap between the capitalist ogre and our working-class heroes, so as to make it plain they’re competing for their sacred selves and not their country and its arrogant, undeserving scions. Letts’s Ford is a big, capricious, over-entitled baby not unlike the one in the White House. (Taken together with his recent triumph as a symbol of rapacious capitalism in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons , Letts is cornering the market on venal American patriarchs, while in his other life, as a playwright, crafting bloody satires of American family values.)

Mangold’s other brilliant touch is to make the heroes far more than daredevil grunts. Shelby, Miles, and Ray McKinnon’s Phil Remington are as versed in physics as any Star Trek android. They know the higher mathematics of torque, the long-range torsion of metal. Every third line — including the ones that are traded between Miles and his devoted son, Peter (Noah Jupe), who strives to learn the physics to protect his dad from harm — sounds like a variation of, “If you take out the tech tech tech, you’ll lose the tech tech in the tech.” “But we can compensate with the tech tech.” “Only if we vector the tech tech tech.” “Well, yeah, obviously.” Worked for me. Taking his cues from Sergio Leone, Mangold photographs his stars as monuments as well as men, pitching his close-ups (from below or at slightly canted angles) into the realm of myth without getting ostentatious about it. These are great American archetypes — extra great given that Clint Eastwood had no evident trig. After Damon in The Martian , all American heroes must “work the problem.”

Damon has lowered his pitch and sounds as swaggeringly Texan as George W. Bush attempted to, in vain. It’s hard to connect that baritone to Damon’s still-youthful face, but he’s a witty enough actor to bridge the credibility gap. The dryly macho quips in the script by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and Jason Keller all land, the dialogue as honed as the racecars, for maximum torque. Damon and Bale go at each other as only marquee titans can, each without fear of being fired for upstaging the star. Bale brings something physical to his driving (pun intended!) delivery: His cheekbones look cut , as if to give Miles an aerodynamic advantage. Bale’s Miles inhabits a different plane than his capitalist masters.

One of those masters is Ford v Ferrari ’s true villain, who is not Ferrari but Ford bootlicker Leo Beebe, played by Josh Lucas. Beebe takes a strong dislike to Bale’s Ken Miles and spends the rest of the film trying either to deep-six him or field another Ford Motors racing team that will cast him into second or third place. For more than half the film the rivalry between the smarmy suit and Cockney maverick works like gangbusters, but as we get closer to Le Mans I began to flash back on David Tomlinson throwing monkey wrenches into the life of Dean Jones and Herbie the lovably sentient Volkswagen in The Love Bug . Every time Miles gets close to winning the acclaim he so richly deserves, there’s Beebe to throw up another speed bump, to the point where you have to laugh. That said, I love The Love Bug . Also, Hollywood filmmakers know as well as anyone that the enemy is far more often on their own team than in a rival camp. Lucas plays the guy who’s every conscientious filmmaker’s nightmare.

Though a mite long, Ford v Ferrari is so thrillingly well made that it’s only later, when your pulse slows, that you see how formulaic it is. But formulas are made to be overhauled, and this film has some fascinating upgrades. For example, the old Westerns had prim wives who stood at the doors of their homesteads and said to their upright husbands, “Be careful.” In 2019, Ken Miles’s wife, Mollie (Caitriona Balfe, of Outlander ), forces him to listen to her “be careful” by driving the family sedan at 80 miles per hour on one-lane roads while he covers his eyes and shrieks, “ Stop! I hear you! I’ll be careful !” The scene doesn’t make a lot of psychological sense, but it certainly signals that Mollie isn’t an old-fashioned pillar of feminine stability, that she has a distinct point of view. The next step toward gender equality would be to give the wife something to do that isn’t borderline psychotic.

*A version of this article appears in the November 11, 2019, issue of  New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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Ford v Ferrari

Common sense media reviewers.

movie review ford v ferrari

Entertaining, well-paced racing biopic has strong language.

Ford v Ferrari Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie is partly about loyalty, with one friend try

Carroll Shelby is a bit of a blowhard and isn't ab

Cars crash and explode. Characters on fire. Charac

Married couple flirts briefly.

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "horses--t," "a--hole," "s

Coca-Cola mentioned. Racetrack corporate sponsorsh

Prescription pills taken for heart condition. Back

Parents need to know that Ford v Ferrari (also known as Le Mans '66 ) is a fact-based racing drama about events leading up to and including the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. Starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale, it's briskly paced and entertaining enough to appeal even to nonracing fans. But it does…

Positive Messages

Movie is partly about loyalty, with one friend trying to stand up to powerful authority figures to defend and protect another friend.

Positive Role Models

Carroll Shelby is a bit of a blowhard and isn't above the occasional dirty trick, but he's brave enough to stand up to powerful men, tries his best to defend and protect his friend. He's portrayed as a hero, a racing champ with hordes of young fans. Ken Miles, while also a racing champ and a good dad, is an otherwise explosive, bad-tempered character, not much of a role model.

Violence & Scariness

Cars crash and explode. Characters on fire. Characters die. Characters get into a fight -- punching, wrestling, etc. Fits of anger/violent tantrums.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Uses of "f--k," "s--t," "horses--t," "a--hole," "son of a bitch," "jackass," "dumbass," "pr--k," "piss," "goddamn," "damn," "hell," "whores," "wanker," "buggered," "screw you." Uses of "oh my God/by God." Cultural slur ("greasy wop").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Coca-Cola mentioned. Racetrack corporate sponsorship includes Budweiser, Coppertone, Good Year, etc.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Prescription pills taken for heart condition. Background smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Ford v Ferrari (also known as Le Mans '66 ) is a fact-based racing drama about events leading up to and including the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. Starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale , it's briskly paced and entertaining enough to appeal even to nonracing fans. But it does include car crashes, explosions, drivers on fire, and people dying. Characters also fight, punch, and wrestle, and there are some violent temper tantrums. Language is fairly strong, with uses of "f--k," "s--t," and more. Era-appropriate brands are seen around the racetrack (Coppertone, Good Year, Budweiser, etc.). One character takes prescription medication for a heart condition, and there's some background smoking. A married couple flirts briefly. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 31 parent reviews

Exciting movie with good messages

One of the greatest movies ever made, what's the story.

In FORD V FERRARI, race car driver Carroll Shelby ( Matt Damon ) wins the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans race but is forced to retire due to a heart condition. Meanwhile, at the Ford Motor Company, Lee Iacocca ( Jon Bernthal ) proposes that the company start making race cars as a way to improve their image with younger drivers. An attempt to partner with Ferrari goes south, so Ford hires Shelby to build their car. Shelby, in turn, hires Ken Miles ( Christian Bale ), a talented but volatile driver, to help work out the bugs. Henry Ford II ( Tracy Letts ) puts executive Leo Beebe ( Josh Lucas ) in charge of the racing division, and Beebe immediately sets out to get rid of Miles. But Miles and Shelby have an ace up their sleeve: They actually have the talent to win races and have their sights set on the 1966 Le Mans. Nevertheless, Beebe has one last weaselly plan.

Is It Any Good?

This enjoyable fact-based racing movie runs a little long, but it manages to keep up a good, breezy pace, focusing more on pure entertainment than on trying to be dutifully "important." At the heart of Ford v Ferrari are two fine performances by Damon and Bale, whose characters forge a touching friendship that's based more on small gestures than on big demonstrations. Miles is a show-off, but Bale makes him seem real, with relatable worries and outrages. And Damon clearly enjoys his clever, quick-witted character, who still somehow makes genuine connections. Just as good is playwright Letts as the stern, rocky second Henry Ford; he's reduced to terrified screaming and joyful tears when Shelby takes him for a high-speed ride in his new car.

At the wheel, director James Mangold gives Ford v Ferrari the crisp, confident energy of his best genre films, Logan and 3:10 to Yuma (the latter of which also starred Bale), without letting it drift into the stodgy, awards-bait seriousness of his previous biopic Walk the Line . Ford v Ferrari is so simple and classic that it could have been sent here directly from the early 1960s. Perhaps its most niggling flaw is Lucas' slimy, one-dimensional villain character, who acts out of pure selfishness. But the racing sequences are impeccably timed, with thundering, thrilling sound design that could convert newbies into hard-core racing fans. Still, the movie's best achievement is the sly way it depicts the central friendship, largely unspoken but still surprisingly tender.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Ford v Ferrari 's violence . How does it compare to what you might see in an action movie? What are the consequences? Do you think some people really watch racing just for the crashes?

Does the movie glamorize racing? How exciting does it look? How dangerous?

Are Shelby and Miles role models ? They're both champions, but they're also complex people with weaknesses and dark sides. Does this make them bad people?

Why do you think there's so much advertising associated with racing? Does seeing a brand's logo at the racetrack make you want to seek out a specific product?

Could Henry Ford II be considered a bully ? How does Shelby handle him? What other ways are there of dealing with bullies?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : November 15, 2019
  • On DVD or streaming : February 11, 2020
  • Cast : Christian Bale , Matt Damon , Caitriona Balfe
  • Director : James Mangold
  • Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
  • Genre : Drama
  • Topics : Cars and Trucks
  • Run time : 152 minutes
  • MPAA rating : PG-13
  • MPAA explanation : some language and peril
  • Last updated : June 20, 2023

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Ford v Ferrari : A Rollicking Tale of Fast Cars and Capitalism

James Mangold’s new film lays bare the greed and egotism behind a fabled auto-racing triumph.

movie review ford v ferrari

The title of Ford v Ferrari promises a satisfyingly simple us-against-them narrative. In the red corner, the stylish and snooty designers at Ferrari, casually sipping espressos as the venerated Italian carmaker cruises to victory year after year in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. In the blue corner, the gritty heroes at Ford, combining American ingenuity and elbow grease to build an underdog auto that can win it all. Yet James Mangold’s new biographical film about the two companies’ fabled 1966 face-off is an epic that avoids such stereotyping. Ford v Ferrari takes the straightforward ethos of car racing—where the winner is whoever is the fastest—and lays bare the egotism and greed required for such a triumph.

It’s also a breezy, throwback-style moviegoing experience: a robust and often funny drama about grown-ups, with nary a superhero costume in sight. Mangold has spent most of this cinematic decade in a comic-book world, delivering two movies about an X-Men character ( The Wolverine and Logan ) that managed to be memorable and inventive. Still, the realism of Ford v Ferrari is a welcome relief for a talented filmmaker with more than a little Old Hollywood in him; Mangold can’t help but give his films, no matter what their ostensible genre, the swagger of a dark ’50s Western. His police-corruption drama, Cop Land (1997); the teen memoir Girl, Interrupted (1999); and his Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line (2005), all feature characters brimming with bravado and self-doubt, trying to carve out lives in a hostile world. With its precise production design and rumbling racing scenes, Ford v Ferrari is as sleek and visually alluring as the vintage vehicles it showcases—but beneath its shiny hood is an engine with real complexity.

The film follows Carroll Shelby (played by Matt Damon), a retired driver turned engineer who is contracted by the execs Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) and Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) to build out Ford’s racing division. Shelby brings aboard Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a stubborn Brit with a colossal chip on his shoulder and an attitude far from the anodyne politeness that’s expected at Ford. Much of the movie’s two-and-a-half-hour running time revolves around Shelby’s corporate battles to convince his bosses that Miles belongs in the driver’s seat. But the heart of the film is in the oily garages below the executive suites, where Ford’s mechanics and drivers strive to create a machine worthy of challenging Ferrari’s perfection.

Whenever Mangold and his cinematographer Phedon Papamichael are shooting racing footage , Ford v Ferrari practically vibrates off the screen. Car racing in the 1960s was still intense and raw (the technology behind functioning brakes was primitive at best), and Mangold works to convey just how death-defying and brutal the day-long Le Mans race was for a driver. Ford’s offices, meanwhile, are burnished and beautiful tableaux of mid-century modernity, expensive-looking exhibitions of American wealth that are just as crucial to the company’s image as the factory floor. Letts gives a quietly nasty performance as Ford II, emphasizing the CEO’s vanity and churlishness as much as the resources at his disposal.

The biggest conflict in Ford v Ferrari isn’t the automakers’ contest, but Shelby and Miles’s struggle to maintain their integrity while pleasing their corporate overlords. Amid all the testosterone, characters such as Mollie Miles (Caitriona Balfe), Ken’s wife, have few opportunities to shine. Though the script (by Jason Keller and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth) tries to give Balfe a few scenes that assert her personality, she’s largely confined to the stock role of “frustrated but supportive partner.” Noah Jupe, who plays Ken and Mollie’s plucky son, Peter, gets similarly lost.

Still, the climax of the film, which details all the unpredictable twists of the race itself, brings home the themes Mangold has been working to flesh out. Ford v Ferrari could have been an easy tale of a dark horse winning against a runaway sporting favorite, but the reality of the 1966 Le Mans contest was much stranger. The movie rejects hackneyed storytelling tropes to depict the limits of ingenuity in the face of capitalistic might, and the result is a rich crowd-pleaser with a pessimistic edge.

movie review ford v ferrari

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Movie Review: Ford V Ferrari

Ronnie Schreiber

The motion picture industry has been making movies about cars and car racing since the silent film era. After all, they’re called “motion” pictures, and race cars certainly do move. Racing has other elements, as well, that provide for dramatic and entertaining stories, not the least of which is life-or-death danger.

In many cases, though, racing movies have disappointed either car enthusiasts for their lack of realism, or their financial backers for their less-than-blockbuster ticket sales. Now and then, however, a gifted director gets the budget, the actors, the story, and the technical wherewithal to make a film that resonates with both knowledgeable enthusiasts and the general public.

James Mangold appears to have accomplished that with Ford v Ferrari ( Le Mans ’66 in foreign markets) starring Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby (who needs no introduction on this site) and Christian Bale as Ken Miles, the star-crossed but exceptionally talented driver and mechanic whose personal story provides the film’s main dramatic arc.

It’s an entertaining and visually beautiful film that has already grossed over $100 million dollars in less than two weeks and looks to end up as the most financially successful racing movie ever. I watched it at a theater in Birmingham, Michigan — an affluent Detroit suburb — at the early evening showing on the second Saturday of the film’s release, which was sold out.

While Ford v Ferrari makes for a fine movie, it’s a terrible documentary. It’s absolutely true that Shelby, Miles and the rest of the Shelby American team whipped the GT40 into fighting trim, battling the bureaucracy at Henry Ford II’s family firm before they could take on Enzo Ferrari at Le Mans. In that sense, Ford v Ferrari is a buddy flick and way, way more. Yes, it’s “based” on a true story, but from how the history is recorded, about half of the movie didn’t happen in real life.

movie review ford v ferrari

I won’t bother recounting the factual inaccuracies, stretchings of truth, and outright fiction in the film. You can find plenty of articles on that topic already. Just about any movie, though, requires some suspension of disbelief, and the acting and filmmaking is on a level that allows you to enjoy the movie even as you are telling yourself, “But that’s not how it really happened.”

As a dramatic movie, Ford v Ferrari probably works better than any racing movie I can think of, but from a technical standpoint I don’t think the racing scenes quite live up to the standards set by Ron Howard in Rush and John Frankenheimer in Grand Prix (who pretty much wrote the book on how to shoot cars racing on a track).

The cars are gorgeous, however. The GT40 and Ferrari P3/4 are two of the most attractive automobiles ever made and the cinematography puts them in the kind of light that can only be realized with real cars on a real track, not CGI. However, if the GT40 was really doing 218 down the Mulsanne straight, it looked like it wasn’t going nearly that fast past the trees in the background in the film. Also, as Casey Putsch pointed out in his review, there was entirely too much of drivers taking their eyes off the road ahead and turning their heads to look at and grimace at competitors. That, however, is a racing movie cliche that goes back at least as far as the late silent era film The Speedway from 1929.

Still, I think car enthusiasts will like it, if they can suspend their disbelief at the liberties taken with the truth, and that should be easy. It’s beautifully shot, the characters are engaging and it’s far from a typical sports movie that ends with the underdog’s victory. Using Ken Miles as the main protagonist gives the story a dramatic arc with an actual denouement: Miles’ death. That’s not a spoiler, it’s history. Miles was killed two months after the 1966 Le Mans race, while testing the Ford “J Car”, the intermediate development between the GT40 that won in ’66 and the GT40 MKIV that Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt drove to victory at Le Mans the following year.

There are a lot of strong performances in the film besides Damon and Bale. Tracy Letts is being mentioned for a Best Supporting Oscar for his portrayal of Henry Ford II, but I think Ray McKinnon steals the show as Phil Remington. The movie deserves considerable props for showing Remington as the technical and fabricating genius behind Shelby American, even if the movie’s publicity materials erroneously perpetuate the myth that Carroll Shelby was a “car designer.”

Ultimately, I think that’s the film’s most enduring value to car guys — it gives proper credit to people like Remington and Miles, the Armando Galarraga of motorsports. Every baseball fan knows that the former Detroit Tigers pitcher got screwed out of a perfect game by an umpire’s admitted blown call on what should have been the final out. Anyone who knows the story about Ford’s GT40 effort knows that Miles was the de facto winner of the 1966 Le Mans race, even if Bruce McLaren was awarded the trophy because of the 1-2-3 photo finish arranged at the behest of Ford executives and a technicality in the Le Mans rules.

movie review ford v ferrari

It’s not a perfect movie; Josh Lucas plays Leo Beebe, a senior Ford executive who takes the role of Shelby and Miles’ antagonist in the film. Lucas’ Beebe is a smarmy, almost cartoon caricature of a corporate snake, portrayed as more villainous than Enzo himself. That’s not necessarily Lucas’ fault — that’s just how the character is written and perhaps the role was influenced by Ford Motor Company’s reputation back then as being a political nightmare of ambitious executives jealous of others’ fiefdoms while they zealously protected their own. How much Beebe really stood in the way of Shelby and Miles is open to debate. The filmmakers could have just as easily focused on the genuine personal grudge between Shelby and Ferrari. As an up and coming racer (who would eventually win Le Mans for Aston Martin) Shelby turned down multiple offers of a factory ride from Il Commendatore . Shelby didn’t like how his friends who drove for Enzo ended up dead for their efforts and for his part, Ferrari was insulted that Shelby wouldn’t risk his life for the honor of driving with Ferrari.

One criticism of the film that I don’t think is fair has come from the “woke” crowd, complaining that the movie’s characters are almost entirely male, presumably of the straight white variety, capitalist planet despoilers and fossil fuel burners who should be as extinct as the decayed dinosaurs they are burning. The character of Mollie Miles, Ken Miles’ wife, played by Caitriona Balfe, has been criticized for being a more or less a traditional housewife, there to provide emotional support for her husband — ignoring that the story takes place no later than 1966, a time when most married women were indeed traditional housewives.

Like Forester wrote, the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. I don’t watch movies with a checklist to keep track of how many characters have what kind of genitals, nor a stopwatch to see if screen time has been allocated equitably and intersectionality, so I can’t say this for sure, but it seems to me that Balfe was on the screen more than either Letts or Remo Girone’s Enzo Ferrari, the two title characters.

If you’re not dangerously allergic to gasoline or testosterone, you should like Ford v Ferrari. Worthy of the ticket price and a spot reserved on your DVD shelf next to your copies of Rush, Grand Prix , Paul Newman’s Winning , and Steve McQueen’s Le Mans .

[Images: 20th Century Fox]

Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

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Join the conversation

Superdessucke

We can all be thankful they didn't recast this with all females as seems to be the trend nowadays. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

JGlanton

I loved this movie and thought Bale's performance was one for the ages. The guy completely transforms himself physically and mentally for a role. I do wonder if the scene where Shelby takes Ford II for a very scary track ride ever happened. Anybody know? My one peeve about the movie is the same one I have for all racing/car/action movies: drivers talking smack at each other while racing at high speed. I don't know what's worse, car drivers yelling at each other over their roaring 427's at 200mph, or motorcycle pilots insulting each other at 200mph like they're standing in a quiet room with no helmets on. It would be hilarious if someone made a satire flick about this, showing drivers trying to communicate petty insults over wind and engine and tire noise, finally having to used hand signals and head shakes to get their point accross before they run off the track.

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10 Best Movies Like Ford v Ferrari

W hen Ford v Ferrari suddenly appeared on the big screen, it surely caught everyone off guard—in the nicest manner possible. This true-story drama starred Christian Bale and Matt Damon and had thrilling auto racing, but it also cut far deeper and captivated a wide range of moviegoers. It’s time to hunt for other films that are similar to this Oscar-nominated favorite while it’s still fresh in our memories. These are the 10 best movies like Ford v Ferrari for when you’re itching for the fast-paced, dramatic anticipation of this blockbuster film.

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10. The Damned United (2009)

There will undoubtedly be conflict when former successful manager Brian Clough takes over England’s premier football team Leeds United due to his aggressive demeanor and obvious distaste for the players’ nasty style of play. A glimpse inside his past career explains both his animosity toward former manager Don Revie and how much he misses Peter Taylor, his right-hand man who has remained faithful to Brighton & Hove Albion. This is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari as it features a tense, fast-paced, ambitious sports film based on a true story. 

9. Heart Like a Wheel (1983)

Judith Muldowney née Roque naturally developed a passion for driving fast automobiles when her father let her sit behind the wheel of his car when she was a young child and after she and her then-boyfriend Jack Muldowney competed in neighborhood street races as teenagers. Although Jack considered his wife’s desire to compete in National Hot Rod races more as a hobby than as a prospective career, he did support her in certain ways as her technician and original race car builder.

Connie Kalitta, a fellow driver who had more than just a professional interest in Shirley, helped her overcome the stereotype that anyone who participated in any sort of motorsport had to be a man in the middle of the 1960s so that she could obtain her National Hot Rod Association license. Connie gave her the nickname “Cha-Cha” (which she detested) due to her female chutzpah, which would be widely utilized by the general public and the media.

Shirley’s relationships with Jack and Connie would be put to the test as she advanced in the sport, both personally and professionally. Based on a true story and featuring a suspenseful, exciting plot, this is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari for when you’re itching to recreate the film’s magic.

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8. Dirt (2018)

In the film Dirt , a young criminal attempts to better his life and that of his younger sister thanks to the help of a nice police officer, a program for troubled youth, and an auto racing team. There will be lots of automobile action, including multiple wrecks, but none that cause significant harm or death because it is centered on off-road racing championships held at several motor speedways.

Other dangers include a gang of auto thieves’ threats and danger, a brawl, vandalism, and fire. Some of the female racetrack attendants wear provocative costumes, and the movie is mostly focused on men. One strong woman acting as a parent strikes a balance against it. This is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari as it features a motorsport premise, a compelling protagonist, and a glowing redemption arc.

7. King Richard (2021)

Richard Williams is adamant about immortalizing his daughters Venus and Serena in history, and he does so with the help of a bold 78-page strategy and a clear vision. The girls are formed by their father’s unwavering determination and their mother’s balanced viewpoint and strong intuition as they train on Compton, California’s abandoned tennis courts, rain or shine, defying the apparently insurmountable obstacles and prevailing expectations put before them.

Based on the inspiring true story, “King Richard” depicts the uplifting journey of a family who produces two of the greatest sports giants in history thanks to their unflinching resolve and steadfast faith. Based on a true story of a high-powered sport, this is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari , especially as it features Will Smith in a powerful and unique role. 

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6. The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)

Golden puppy Enzo recounts his lovely life with loyal owner Denny in death basket flashbacks. Denny is a gifted and aspiring Formula One race car driver who put his racing ambitions on hold in order to marry Eve and raise their daughter Zoe. Denny doesn’t accept a test driver position at Ferrari’s Milan headquarters until after Eve dies in a catastrophic accident and her wealthy parents lose a contentious custody battle against him.

By that time, inseparable Enzo is so sick that he can only take one more ride in Denny’s state-of-the-art F1 car, but he is sure that eight years from then he will be reborn as a promising racer. This is undeniably one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari , incorporating the racing theme alongside a compelling, heartwarming character arc and plot. 

5. Driven (2001)

Jimmy Bly, a talented rookie race car driver, has started to lose focus and is falling in the standings. It makes sense given the tremendous pressure his wildly ambitious promoter brother is putting on him, as well as Bly’s relationship with Sophia, the fiancée of his arch-competitor. Car owner Carl Henry enlists former racing champion Joe Tanto to assist Bly because there is a lot riding on him.

Tanto must first cope with the psychological wounds left over from a devastating racing accident that almost cost him his life in order to push Bly back to the top of the standings. Though a smaller, lesser-known film, this is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari , especially as it focuses on racing and relationships.  

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4. Moneyball (2011)

The Oakland A’s of general manager Billy Beane in 2001 suffered a postseason loss to the Yankees and subsequently lost three stars to free agency. With the A’s player salary being less than one-third of those of wealthy teams, how is Beane able to produce a competitive team? Beane employs and speaks to Peter Brand, a recent Yale graduate who assesses players using Bill James’ statistical approach, much to the dismay of his scouts.

On paper, Beane puts together a team of unknown players that can reach base and score runs. The players won’t then be used in the manner that Art Howe, Beane’s manager, desires. Can Beane defeat Howe, win games, advance to the 2002 World Series, and defy baseball’s rigid rules? As another true story and compelling plot, this is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari . 

3. Le Mans (1971)

This film depicts an automobile race in the 1970s at the world’s most challenging endurance track, Le Mans in France, in breadth and detail that is almost documentary-like. 13.4 kilometers of closed country road are used for the race, which lasts for 24 hours. The two drivers of each car switch out every few hours, yet maintaining focus and material is still difficult.

The competition between the German Stahler driving a Ferrari 512LM and the American Delaney driving a Gulf Team Porsche 917 is the main attraction. Delaney is under a lot of pressure because the previous year he was responsible for a serious accident that resulted in the death of his friend Lisa’s husband. An oldie but goodie, this is one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari . 

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2. Born to Race (2011)

The protagonist of this tale is the disobedient young street racer Danny Krueger, who is headed for danger. He is transferred to a tiny town to stay with his estranged father, a retired NASCAR racer, after a crash at an illegal street race. When Danny is in high school, he meets Jessica. He accepts her party invitation. Danny accepts the offer in an effort to fit in.

Danny encounters local hotshot Jake Kendall at the event. The two individuals argue. Danny will need to uphold Jake’s high standards for the neighborhood in order to be accepted, which will require him to compete once more. In the meantime, there are ups and downs in Danny’s relationship with his father. Danny still hasn’t recovered from his father abandoning him and his mom when he was just a little child.

He can’t avoid his father as he tries to navigate his new community, and as they converse, the two slowly come to see that they have more in common than they initially thought. Danny is compelled to ask his father for assistance in defeating his competitor Jake Kendall when he decides to compete in the NHRA High School Drags. This is a classic and one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari , hands down. 

1. Rush (2013)

The film is based on the true story of a fiercely competitive clash between the dashing English playboy James Hunt and his meticulous, brilliant competitor, Austrian driver Niki Lauda. It is set against the sensual, seductive golden age of Formula 1 racing in the 1970s. The narrative covers both drivers’ vastly different personal characteristics on and off the oval, their relationships, and the incredible 1976 season in which they each risked everything to win the world championship in a sport where mistakes are fatal.

Hunt and Lauda couldn’t have been more dissimilar from one another, both on and off the track. Despite the fact that Lauda’s reputation for rigid control of perfectionism and Englishman Hunt’s exuberant public persona frequently clashed, both men were undoubtedly among the best racecar drivers to ever grace the track.

But after Lauda nearly loses his life in a tragic incident at the 1976 Nürburgring Grand Prix, there is reluctant respect between the two racers as Hunt learns how dedicated Lauda is to the sport they both love. This is undeniably one of the best movies like Ford v Ferrari and will be the perfect addition to your next comfort movie night. 

Need an adrenaline rush? These are the 10 best movies like Ford v Ferrari for when you’re itching for fast-paced drama and action on the screen.

IMAGES

  1. Review: Ford v Ferrari

    movie review ford v ferrari

  2. Rob's Car Movie Review: Ford v Ferrari (2019)

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  3. Ford v. Ferrari: Watch The Original 1966 Le Mans Documentary

    movie review ford v ferrari

  4. Movie Review: Ford v Ferrari

    movie review ford v ferrari

  5. ‘Ford v Ferrari’ movie review: Works as long as it stays in the driver

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  6. Ford v Ferrari Movie Review

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COMMENTS

  1. Ford v Ferrari movie review & film summary (2019)

    The dialogue is replete with zingers and the racing sequences are a blast. Mangold sticks to the verities and conveys high speeds and potentially deadly impacts with a lot of gusto; there's very little that looks tricked-up or obviously animated.

  2. Ford v Ferrari

    Ford v Ferrari | Rotten Tomatoes Most Anticipated This Month Most popular -- Air Force One Down -- Beautiful Wedding -- Double Blind -- I Love You More -- Five Blind Dates -- Kill Me if You Dare...

  3. 'Ford v Ferrari' Review: It's a Gas

    12 The director James Mangold narrates a scene featuring Christian Bale and Matt Damon. Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox By A.O. Scott Published Nov. 14, 2019 Updated Nov. 18, 2019 Ford v...

  4. Ford v Ferrari review

    F ord v Ferrari is a great-looking, handsomely produced but tiringly acted and inert sports drama about two good ol' boys from the self-admiring world of motor racing - which a character here...

  5. Ford v Ferrari (2019)

    8.1 /10 457K YOUR RATING Rate POPULARITY 455 28 Play trailer 2:29 52 Videos 99+ Photos Action Biography Drama American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966. Director James Mangold

  6. 'Ford v Ferrari' Review: The Story of a Competitive Friendship

    Most racing movies are about rivals, but not so "Ford v Ferrari," which, despite its competition-oriented title, is actually the story of two friends, Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles (played by ...

  7. Ford v Ferrari

    FORD V FERRARI is an extremely entertaining and intelligent film made with the same type of drive for excellence that possessed the creators Ken Miles, Carroll Shelby and Enzo Ferrari and...

  8. Ford v Ferrari Review

    Verdict. Like a race car without an engine, Ford v Ferrari looks good on the surface, but fails to motor for its 150-minutes. There's fun to be had watching the Ford executives clash, and the ...

  9. 'Ford v Ferrari' Review

    'Ford v Ferrari': Film Review | Telluride 2019 THR review: Christian Bale and Matt Damon play 1960s racing legends Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby, respectively, in 'Ford v Ferrari,'...

  10. Review: 'Ford v Ferrari' Takes The Checkered Flag : NPR

    Ford v Ferrari is based on real-life events, but I have no idea whether this wild ride ever took place. Not that it matters: Mollie's tough-love therapy inserts an intrepid woman into a mega-manly ...

  11. Review: 'Ford V Ferrari' : NPR

    DAVID GREENE, HOST: I got to warn you here. If you go see the new movie, "Ford V Ferrari," in a theater, get ready for your seat to vibrate as if you're flying on a racetrack at 200 miles...

  12. 'Ford v Ferrari' Review: Damon, Bale and the Need for Speed

    November 13, 2019 Matt Damon and Christian Bale in 'Ford v Ferrari.' Merrick Morton/Twentieth Century Fox Vroom! You can feel the power thrumming under James Mangold's Ford v Ferrari —...

  13. Ford V. Ferrari Is the Best Kind of Throwback

    September 2, 2019 James Mangold 's Ford V. Ferrari has the makings of a hit: fast cars, a top-of-the-line cast headed up by Christian Bale and Matt Damon, male friendship, male rivalry,...

  14. Ford v Ferrari Movie Review

    Thankfully, the final film, Ford v Ferrari (which was titled Go Like Hell early on in development), transcends its biographical trappings to deliver an enjoyable viewing experience for gearheads and race-car novices alike. And with director James Mangold (of Walk the Line and Logan fame) calling the shots, the biopic is mostly successful in ...

  15. Ford v Ferrari Movie Review: MotorTrend's Take on the 2019 Racing Movie

    6 Photos Images courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox. The biggest omission, from an overly pedantic, car-nut perspective, is that Ford v Ferrari doesn't even acknowledge the quite real...

  16. Ford v Ferrari Movie Review: An Old-fashioned Rouser

    movie review Nov. 15, 2019. Ford v Ferrari Is an Old-fashioned Rouser. By David Edelstein. Ford v Ferrari. Directed by James Mangold, 20th Century Fox. PG-13. ... In Ford v Ferrari, the director ...

  17. Ford v Ferrari Movie Review

    Parents Say: age 11+ 31 reviews Any Iffy Content? Read more Watch Our Video Review Watch now A Lot or a Little? What you will—and won't—find in this movie. Positive Messages Movie is partly about loyalty, with one friend try Positive Role Models Carroll Shelby is a bit of a blowhard and isn't ab Violence & Scariness Cars crash and explode.

  18. 'Ford v Ferrari' Is a Different Kind of Underdog Story

    Culture Ford v Ferrari: A Rollicking Tale of Fast Cars and Capitalism James Mangold's new film lays bare the greed and egotism behind a fabled auto-racing triumph. By David Sims 20th Century...

  19. Ford v Ferrari

    When Ford demands why he should not sack Shelby, Shelby explains that despite the GT40's reliability problems, it instilled fear in Enzo Ferrari by reaching 218 mph (350.8 km/h ), on the Mulsanne Straight before breaking down. He says a race car cannot be designed by committee. Ford tells him to continue the project and report directly to him.

  20. 'Ford v Ferrari' movie review: A masterpiece that races ...

    There is so much to love about Ford v. Ferrari. It's well-cast, well-acted, well-directed, and beautifully crafted from stem to stern. And for a movie that doesn't necessarily subscribe to ...

  21. Movie Review: Ford V Ferrari

    While Ford v Ferrari makes for a fine movie, it's a terrible documentary. It's absolutely true that Shelby, Miles and the rest of the Shelby American team whipped the GT40 into fighting trim, battling the bureaucracy at Henry Ford II's family firm before they could take on Enzo Ferrari at Le Mans. In that sense, Ford v Ferrari is a buddy ...

  22. Rob's Car Movie Review: Ford v Ferrari (2019)

    Ford v Ferrari is a superlatively well-crafted film. Most startling is its mega-budget production design. It effortlessly transports us back to the mid-'60s with all the period architecture, signage, and wardrobe that pop culture junkies could ask for. The film's script is a thing of beauty, too.

  23. MOVIE REVIEW: Ford V. Ferrari

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