Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Mann
Starring: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Patrick
Dempsey, Jack O'Connell, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone
Among the many nuggets of wisdom offered by Italian motor mogul Enzo
Ferrari in Michael Mann's biopic are "Two objects cannot occupy
the same space" and "Things that work better tend to also look better."
Ironically it's advice that Mann fails to heed. Working from a dusty
2009 script by the late Troy Kennedy Martin (screenwriter of Bank
Holiday classics The Italian Job and
Kelly's Heroes), Mann has delivered a film that can't pin down what exactly it wants
to say about its subject, or even which aspect of his life it's
concerned with.
A soapy domestic drama struggles to occupy the same space as a sports
movie. The marriage of Enzo (Adam Driver) and his wife Laura (Penélope Cruz) is running out of gas. Enzo spends more time with his younger
mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) than with his wife. Laura knows
her husband cheats, but what she doesn't know is that he has a young son
with Lina, a boy named Piero who looks like the sort of Mediterranean
moppet who would have his hair ruffled by a pot-bellied grandpa in a
frozen pizza commercial. With Enzo and Laura's only son Dino having
passed away, Piero stands to inherit the Ferrari fortune, if Enzo
acquiesces to Lina's wishes to have their son confirmed as a
Ferrari.
There's potential for all sorts of Machiavellian chicanery with this
subplot, but Mann never leans into the setup's campy potential. He can't
seem to realise that his Enzo and Laura are JR and Sue Ellen. Even their
arguments are boring, which is saying something for an Italian couple.
When a character utters the line "The wrong son died," we're left to
wonder if Mann understands how clichéd his film really is, and if he has
ever watched any other biopics.
It's suggested that Enzo is more concerned with his motor-racing team
than his personal life. I wish Mann felt the same way, as this aspect of
Enzo's life should be tailor made for the director. On paper at least,
Enzo should be the classic Mann protagonist: an obsessive man with grey
hair (Mann's fetish for silver foxes is up there with Tarantino's love
of women's feet). But Mann and Driver never bring Enzo to life. He's
like a stiff tailor's dummy wheeled in and out of scenes, occasionally
delivering a trite Enzo-ism but mostly reading from a script that
resembles a series of curriculum vitaes in how much of it is dedicated
to spelling out the achievements of the various men Enzo encounters.
Every time a new character pops up Enzo will say something like "Ah,
Lucio, didn't you win the Gran Bellisimo in 1955 for Matarazi?"
Ferrari is a film that insists on telling us what every
character drives, but fails to show us what drives them.
As a sports movie it's a dud because Mann isn't really interested in
making a sports movie, rather a film about a man who runs a sports team.
The climactic race, the Mille Miglia, could have been a set-piece for
the ages if Mann cared about the winners and losers. With Mann's failure
to communicate the details of the race we never know where any of the
cars are in relation to one another, so any potential drama that could
be mined from the event is voided (I'm also very confused as to how Enzo
always manages to stay ahead of a bunch of men driving the world's
fastest land vehicles).
When Tarantino scored a hit with 2009's
Inglorious Basterds, several cultural commentators surmised that the film had put a nail
in the coffin of Hollywood's tradition of having Europeans played by
English speaking actors. Yet here we are two decades later with the
likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Driver playing some of the continent's most
famous sons. It's difficult to watch Ferrari and not be
reminded of Ridley Scott's
House of Gucci
with its non-Italian cast Parma-hamming it up in a Mediterranean cousin
of stage Oirish. How do we even judge the performances when everyone is
essentially miscast? Driver certainly looks the part, but he speaks like
Dracula on heroin. Cruz is similarly somnambulistic, though in her
defence she's saddled with a character who is little more than a walking
scowl. Woodley is laughably miscast and seems to give up attempting an
accent at several points. Ironically, the accents make so much of the
dialogue so incomprehensible that if you're watching at home you may
well end up resorting to subtitles. At time of writing, the biggest hit
in the western world is the Japanese blockbuster
Godzilla Minus One, which would suggest that audiences aren't anywhere near as subtitle
averse as Hollywood believes.
As you would expect from a Michael Mann movie, Ferrari at
least looks good. There are individual shots in the racing sequences
that truly convey the insanity of driving a rocket on a road. A late
tragedy is rendered in the shockingly gory fashion of a
Final Destination
set-piece, reminding us how under-valued human life was as recently as
the mid 20th century. But you can't polish a turd. If it works better it
looks better. The reverse is rarely true.
Ferrari is on Sky Cinema now.
