Even if you’re Christian Bale, there’s only so much acting you can do from behind the wheel as your speeding car rounds a hairpin turn for the umpteenth time. And “Ford v Ferrari,” clocking in at a ponderous 2¹/₂ hours, spends an awful lot of time on those turns.
If only director James Mangold had taken the route the Wachowskis did with “Speed Racer,” which had psychedelic colors to spice things up.
Still, car lovers will likely find this piece of Americana a treat. In the mid-’60s, the Ford Motor Company decided to build a race car to beat the champion, Ferrari. It enlisted charismatic car designer and racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), who in turn brought on prickly speed demon Ken Miles (Bale), a driver and engineer who’d served in the British army before coming to America to race.
Mangold’s film has the polished sheen of a “Mad Men” episode. It’s at its best when Shelby’s going toe to toe with Ford execs, or trying to keep Miles from shooting his mouth off in front of them. Damon and Bale have so much fun together on-screen — at one point, their characters half-jokingly fistfight in a park, scattering Miles’ groceries everywhere — it’s a pity the driving keeps them apart for most of the movie.
In the film’s best sequence, Shelby takes a harrumphing Henry Ford Jr. (Tracy Letts) out in the latest model. Ford’s white as a sheet when they hit a turn, and sobbing by the time Shelby hits the brakes.
Caitriona Balfe, as Miles’ wife, Mollie, spends much of the film worrying beside the radio or the telephone but manages to wrest some personality out of her brief scenes, especially one in which she exacts promises from her husband by driving their station wagon as if she’s on a racetrack.
But this is all leading up to the races, the very, very long races in which Miles first tests a prototype of Ford’s GT40 in Daytona, Fla., before going on to the Le Mans race in Paris, where Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) and his cohorts look on with increasing trepidation. Damon enlivens the proceedings every time there’s a pit stop, but Mangold could have lost a lap or five in the editing room. Then again, 24 Hours of Le Mans is still so popular, to say nothing of our own enduring NASCAR mania, that I imagine many viewers will be more than happy to be whisked away by “Ford v Ferrari.”