CINEMA | Adam Driver and Michael Mann Outrace 'Ferrari'

"If you get into one of my cars, you get in to win."

Neon / Elevation Pictures

Octogenarian American filmmaker Michael Mann directs a silver-haired Adam Driver as the famed eponymous Italian motor racing and automobile magnate Enzo Ferrari in the riveting biographical sports drama. Based on the non-fiction book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine by Brock Yates, the 1957-set Ferrari fits right in with Mann's cannon of stories about historical men obsessed with excelling at their chosen profession.

Co-starring Penélope Cruz and Shailene Woodley as Enzo's estranged wife/business partner and mistress, the film takes an economical approach to its biography, framed around the treacherous 1,000-mile Mille Miglia open-road race on the streets between Brescia and Rome, the highlights of his story from his first son's illness and passing to WWII to almost going bankrupt, Mann uses the inherent drama of racing to sum up the legendary myth of the Italian automotive figure through a pivotal three-month period.

Driver's particular physicality suits Enzo Ferrari and Mann's subdued approach much more than the similarly themed House of Gucci. Cruz's layered, dynamic portrayal steals the film with their unique marital and business arrangement centering much of the story's inherent dramatic material.

Adapted by veteran screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin before he passed away in 2009, much of Ferrari's fluid script reads like a historical television soap opera executed with a prestige sheen by lifting key elements to wrap around the film's racing sequences. It's all up to the stirring performances and dynamic racing sequences to piece the parts together fairly well.

There are plenty of swerves and detours to Ferrari's spare Italian drama. Built like an eventual tragedy with an uplifting hopefulness to the real-life fate of its characters, Mann and Driver rebuild another sprawling biopic that manages to focus on outracing its turbo-charged mid-century automobiles.


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