{"id":45321,"date":"2019-11-18T09:29:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T14:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=45321"},"modified":"2019-11-18T09:29:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T14:29:45","slug":"ford-v-ferrari-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/11\/ford-v-ferrari-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford v Ferrari Movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

            You\nwon\u2019t find many adults on the planet who are less of a gearhead than yours\ntruly. I live in New York specifically because I don\u2019t drive. I gave up on\nlearning after five lessons, one of which saw a cop car behind me (I can\u2019t say\nI got \u201cpulled over\u201d because what I did was slam on the breaks in the middle of\nthe road and just remain petrified). Also, I crashed a Power Wheel when I was\nthree and a go-cart when I was fifteen. Though I must say that I am pretty good\nat not crashing bumper cars. The point is that the subject matter of \u201cFord v\nFerrari\u201d is very foreign to me. You may feel differently if you can sympathize\nwith the adrenaline rush of pushing a racecar to its limit in a battle for\nautomotive world dominance. Me, I can sympathize with driver Carroll Shelby (Matt\nDamon) seemingly losing confidence in his racing ability because the track is\nwet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nyear is 1963 and both the Ford Motor Company and Ferrari are facing financial\nhardships. I would point out to Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) that angrily shutting\ndown his factory\u2019s famed assembly lines and chewing out blameless employees is\nnot a step toward improvement. Ford VP Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) convinces\nFord to try to buy Ferrari, but Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) rejects the deal,\ncomplete with personal insults toward Ford. Ford decides he wants to crush\nFerrari by having a Ford car win the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the top of the list\nto construct the car is former Le Mans winner Shelby, but way down the list of\npreferred drivers is Shelby\u2019s friend Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Miles and his\nwife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) are in financial trouble of their own, and Ken\nmay have to quit racing, which is his passion but doesn\u2019t pay the bills. It\u2019s\nnot that Miles isn\u2019t a talented driver \u2013 he\u2019s arguably the best in the world \u2013\nbut he\u2019s an outspoken hothead who butts heads with just about every Ford\nexecutive, especially Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas). Other drivers are sent to Le Mans\ninstead, but Ford performs dismally. Finally, in 1966, Ford agrees to send\nMiles to Le Mans, but only after Shelby puts his entire manufacturing company\non the line if Miles doesn\u2019t win that year\u2019s 24 Hours at Daytona. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie of course\nclimaxes at Le Mans, and when Ford is actually racing against Ferrari, the spectacle\nlives up to the hype. There\u2019s a real sense of danger and consequence for any\nmistakes. Crashes are hair-raising and the movie is at least going to be in the\nconversation for sounds effects Oscars. But Ferrari turns out to not quite be\nthe opponent it\u2019s been made out to be. Ford\u2019s toughest opponent in this movie\nturns out to be\u2026 Ford itself. For some reason, Henry Ford II keeps trusting\nhimself and the boneheaded Beebe to make decisions that consummate\nprofessionals Shelby and Miles should be making. A certain last-minute decision\nis the very antithesis of sports competition, and heck, capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The human drama in\n\u201cFord v Ferrari\u201d is compelling thanks to some fine performances by the stacked\ncast, but the storyline is completely typical of a sports movie that involves\nan underdog and\/or a comeback. The race scenes are exciting enough during broad\nstrokes like overtaking, finishing, crashes and fires, though I will confess\nthat I was lost on many of the finer points of both mechanics and driving. I\ncertainly won\u2019t say that this is a \u201cbad\u201d movie, but I think it\u2019s a failure on\nsome level that I didn\u2019t care about auto racing going in and I didn\u2019t care\nabout it coming out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B- <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFord v Ferrari\u201d is rated PG-13 for\nsome language and peril. Its running time is 152 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             You won\u2019t find many adults on the planet who are less of a gearhead than yours truly. I live in New York specifically because I don\u2019t… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}