Michael Mann’s Ferrari is, no surprise, full of great performances and visuals. Adam Driver is tremendous as Enzo Ferrari, the legendary automaker surrounded by death his entire life. Penélope Cruz is even better as his grief-stricken wife forced to share her husband with another. Seeing gorgeous old race cars traverse the Italian countryside will also transport you to a time and place that feels both distant yet tantalizing close. At its best the film is an immersive experience, and also a brutal one, as Mann refuses to let anyone shy away from the dangers of the sport. The movie forces you to confront the unavoidable tragedy of auto racing in a way few other films ever have. The problem is Ferrari‘s proverbial engine. The movie never gets into full gear because of an oddly paced script that focuses on the least interesting story it could have told.
Ferrari covers a very specific period in Enzo Ferrari’s life, the summer of 1957, as his personal and professional lives both seem headed for disaster. Enzo’s wife and business partner, Cruz’s Laura, learns about his secret child and de facto other wife at the same time the couple is trying to save the business they started together. This all comes as they are still mourning the loss of their only child. And with more loss comes more risk for ruin.
It’s easy to see why Mann decided this exact period in Enzo’s life would make for a great biopic. This interconnected story touches on all aspects of Ferrari’s life. It’s a tale about an admired titan of his industry forced to face his past sins and current problems simultaneously while he tries to save his future. And he must do this all while trying to win races today.
It just doesn’t fully work as a cohesive story. The movie is painfully slow until it finally picks up the pace in the latter half. Slow builds can be incredibly rewarding, but there’s simply not enough payoff here. The result is a feeling that Mann made two totally different movies and mashed them together.
That’s at least partly because while Driver is genuinely engaging in the leading role, the movie never makes the case that Ferrari the man is actually all that interesting. For all his success, scandals, deadly crashes, and business and racing acumen, he moves through life trying to be unaffected by everything that happens to him. He explains why he’s this way during the film. To continue working in his industry he decided to build a wall against emotion. It was the only way to make sure all of the death involved with racing didn’t destroy him.
A tighter script that fleshed out, expanded, or centered one of the film’s most intriguing moments would have solved a lot of Ferrari‘s problems. That’s the most frustrating thing about this otherwise decent film. There’s not just one great movie clearly hiding within it, there are at least three or four.
Obviously stoic characters aren’t inherently uninteresting. And with Driver in the role it might not have been a problem here if Ferrari had a slightly different perspective. Almost everything that happens in the film is fascinating both unto itself as well as for what it means for Enzo personally. Most of those big, important moments, events, and sequences are strong enough to have served as the plot’s core rather than the unfocused story we got. Instead, Ferrari never really ties together all of its elements into one cohesive idea. It’s about so many things that it doesn’t feel like it’s specifically about anything. While the movie explores obvious themes about what we value in life, power, and mortality, it plays like a vehicle for us to watch Ferrari navigate life rather than invest in him as a person.
That includes a truly shocking moment towards the end of the film. (If you don’t know anything about this story go into Ferrari that way, believe me.) I left wishing I got to see the movie where Ferrari dealt with its fallout rather than just being told how he did. I felt that way constantly throughout the film, as major events and tragedies came and went without much reflection. That was almost certainly an intentional choice meant to mirror Enzo Ferrari’s own way of dealing with calamity. Just because that makes sense doesn’t mean it made for a good viewing experience.
One thing that was more than good was Penélope Cruz’s moving, powerful performance. It’s hard to imagine five more worthy performances for Best Supporting Actress this year. Her Laura is full of rage, grief, disappointment, and regret. Sometimes she can keep those emotions under control, other times she can’t. But every time she’s on screen she’s mesmerizing to watch. Her Laura would have made for a far better choice to focus this story around.
While we can wish Ferrari had been a different movie, we can’t judge it that way. All we can do is evaluate the film Michael Mann actually delivered. That film is a flawed work of art whose parts are greater than its sum.
In the end Ferrari is like a great looking race car with a world class driver and all-star crew. But like a movie with a subpar script, it doesn’t matter who’s behind the wheel of a car when the engine doesn’t work.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter and Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.