The Ferrari story has been told many times over on the silver screen. It’s a story of glitz and glamor, staked in Italian tradition and full or contradiction. In some small way, I can understand Michael Man’s fascination with the subject matter and his desire to portray this man on screen.
However, after seeing Ferrari, it’s hard to understand why Mann saw this as an essential story to tell. The market has been flooded with similarly themed and aesthetic-twins of racing films designed to get tech nominations at the Oscars. Unfortunately, Mann hitched his wagon to a generic, conventional script steeped in genre cliches. Extremely forgettable, Hollywood nonsense led by a genuinely terrible performance from Adam Driver. Stop casting him as an Italian mogul, he’s neither convincing or commanding enough. Virtually no other actor gets miscast as frequently as Driver. Then, there’s Penelope Cruz – she’s scene stealing and forcing the camera off Driver. Her under eye makeup is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but Cruz puts her stamp on every fiery line of dialogue.
The problem, nonetheless, is the marriage drama is basic nothing. It’s every cheating structure. The film then hinges on one visual effects shot that likely cost 60% of the budget – the accident. It’s a well done scene visually, but outside of that, the driving scenes are unbearable and nonsensical. Cut to tire shot, cut to driver, cut to nondescript track shot – over and over and over…look, Michael Mann has never been a favorite of mine. Heat (1999) is massively overrated, Collateral’s structure is terrible, Inside Man…OK, Inside Man is fucking amazing and Thief (1985) is pretty grand…OK, he’s good. But, his hits are scattered around and Ferrari would rank near the bottom of his filmography.
Review: ☆☆ (40)
Verdict: not weird
Weird Cinema 