FERRARI : Tuesday 9th January 2024.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'FERRARI' earlier this week, and this American biographical sports drama film is Directed by Michael Mann and is based on the 1991 biography 'Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine' by motorsport journalist Brock Yates. Michael Mann's prior feature film making credits take in his Directorial debut in 1981 with 'Thief' which he would follow up with the likes of 'Manhunter' in 1986, 'The Last of the Mohicans' in 1992, 'Heat' in 1995, 'The Insider' in 1999, 'Ali' in 2001, 'Collateral' in 2004, 'Miami Vice' in 2006 and 'Public Enemies' in 2009. 'Ferrari' has been a passion project of Mann's since 2000 when he first began exploring making the film. Since then Christian Bale and then Hugh Jackman were attached to star as Enzo Ferrari, with Adam Driver eventually scoring the gig. 'Ferrari' was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, where it Premiered at the end of August last year, before its wide cinema release in the US on 25th December, having so far grossed US$28M from a production budget of US$95M and garnering generally favourable reviews. 

The film opens up with pre-WWII black and white footage of cars racing around a dusty track with a young Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) crossing the finish line to take first place. We then fast forward to 1957 and now the owner of the Ferrari motor racing company and sports car manufacturer Enzo is seen waking up in bed one bright sunny morning next to his mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley). He sneaks out of bed, gets dressed and stealthily leaves the house bump starting his car down the drive so as not to wake Lina and their young son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese). 

He arrives home to Modena early in the morning where his wife Laura Ferrari (Penelope Cruz) is waiting for him, with a loaded pistol. After a heated exchange of words she shoots at him deliberately missing but putting a bullet hole in the wall at head height. Enzo then visits the family mausoleum to pay his respects to his son with Laura, Alfredo 'Dino' Ferrari, who died just one year previously in 1956 at the age of 24 from muscular dystrophy. Lina in the meantime is putting pressure on Enzo to grant their illegitimate son, the Ferrari name as his confirmation approaches.

Meanwhile, Ferrari’s manufacturing company is suffering from severe financial haemorrhaging. His accountant tells him that last year the company sold just 98 sports cars and to survive they need to sell four hundred in order to underpin Enzo's racing ambitions. Faced with no other choice, Ferrari must merge with a sister company in order to keep his business afloat. However, Laura owns half of Ferrari's shares, and ever since the company was founded in 1947 the pair have done everything on an even 50/50 basis. In order to move forward on deals, Enzo must convince Laura to sign the entirety of the company over to him. A resentful Laura demands a bank cheque for US$500K, which will bankrupt the company if she cashes it. The accountant also suggests that Ferrari should enter his racing team to the 1957 Mille Miglia - the 24th edition of the auto race held on a course totalling 992.332 miles (1,597.004 km), made up entirely of public roads around Italy, mostly on the outer parts of the country on 11th and 12th May 1957. The route was based on a round trip between Brescia and Rome, with start/finish in Brescia.

Meanwhile, during a private Ferrari test session at the Modena Autodrome, Eugenio Castellotti (Marino Franchitti) was testing a new Ferrari Grand Prix car for the 1957 season. He had been told by Enzo in person to test there and set a fast time, in order to beat an unofficial lap record that had just been set by Maserati. Castelotti hit a high kerb at a chicane and was thrown out of the car - his body was hurled 100 yards with the car repeatedly overturning before coming to rest in the members' stand. Castelotti was killed instantly. Enzo orders Laura to withdraw US$25K from the business account to give to Castelotti's widow. 

At the bank sitting with a clerk to withdraw the funds, the clerk makes the mistake of naming the villa where Lina lives. Laura confirms her suspicions by having her driver take them to the address located in the countryside outside Modena, where she confirms that Enzo has been having an affair, and has secretly been using company funds to maintain the villa. Laura confronts Enzo with the fact that she knows the truth. Enzo agrees to write the cheque and trusts her to wait until such time as a business partnership is forged. 

As the Mille Miglia commences in Brescia, Enzo encourages his drivers to remain ahead of the competition. During a pit-stop in Rome, Enzo’s newest addition to the team, Alfonso de Portago, (Gabriel Leone) refuses to change his tyres to stay in the lead. 

Later, while driving at top speed down a very long stretch of country road passing through the village of Guidizzolo he suffers a tyre blowout caused by a worn tyre striking the sharp edge of a cats eye in the road and loses control of the vehicle, which veers off the road, hits a telephone pole, jumps over a brook, bounces back on the road and ends up wheels down in the brook on the other side of the road killing de Portago by severing his body in half, his American co-driver/navigator and nine onlookers, five of whom were children, and injuring a further twenty.

Another of Ferrari's drivers, the veteran Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey), completes the round trip to Brescia and wins the race in the Ferrari 315S, ahead of Wolfgang von Trips (Wyatt Carnell) also driving a Ferrari 315S in second place and Olivier Gendebien (Brett Smrz) and Jacques Washer in the Ferrari 250 GT LWB Scaglietti in third place, so completing a top three sweep for the Prancing Horse. Ferrari is blamed by the media for de Portago's lethal accident, and Laura cashes her cheque to enable Enzo to bribe journalists into deflecting the blame away from him and Ferrari. She signs over the full rights to the company, requesting that in return, Enzo refrain from giving Piero the Ferrari name until after she is dead. Enzo agrees, and later accompanies Piero to his half-brother's grave. In 1961 Ferrari and Enzo were cleared of any culpability in the crash at Guidizzolo. Laura died in 1978 and in 1989 Piero was nominated as vice-Chairman of Ferrari, and in 1990 he legally changed his name from Piero Lardi Ferrari to Piero Ferrari. He remains vice-Chairman of the Ferrari automotive company to this day. 

With Michael Mann's 'Ferrari' the Director here has delivered his trademark attention to detail and his top notch production values, coupled with two compelling performances from Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, and a story covering a few months in 1957 that intertwines the emotion and turmoil of Enzo's personal life with his ambitions on the race track and the need to keep his company afloat. 'Ferrari' is, when all is said and done, a character study of a racing driver turned entrepreneur who is determined to put his sports cars on the map, build a company that will be the envy of motor enthusiasts everywhere long after he is gone, and who is able to overcome adversity in his personal and business life by always looking forward and never looking back. My one criticism of 'Ferrari' is that the film seems to look upon the 1957 Mille Miglia as the first time that Ferrari entered this race, when in fact Ferrari won its first Mille Miglia in 1948, followed by wins in '49, '50, '51', '52, '53, '56 and of course '57, which was the last year that the race was held in this format before being disbanded altogether in 1961 for driver and spectator safety reasons. 

'Ferrari' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-