Ford vs Ferrari ... Cliches undermine speed in the circuit

It is said that the sports film format makes a good film if the story is true. American director James Mangold left the world of X-Men after directing The Wolverine and Logan, and returned to the real world to direct a film led by two movie stars from the first row.

Ford VS Ferrari (Ford Race Against Ferrari) tells the story of another type of championship, led by Matt Demin and Christian Bell. When it comes to motor racing movies, cinema has not given it its right, often because the scene of the cars rolling the circuit cycle after cycle is not in the movie scene.

This was the most important challenge for Mangold, who minimized the race scenes, distributing the film's focus evenly between the sporting elements and the challenges of building race cars faced by the characters. The film is inspired by Henry Ford's second true story (Tracy Letts), and how he entered a race against Enzo Ferrari (Remo Gironi), which ended in a confrontation at the La Moon circuit in 1965 and 1966.

Improve the drama course

Many of the facts have been changed in favor of improving the course of the drama in the film, the film begins with the pressure Ford feels to compete with the usual champion Ferrari, Ford decides to hire his staff Lee Lacoca (John Bernthal) and Leo Pep (Josh Lucas) to use the former winner of the La Mon Carroll Shelby ( Matt Demen to design a racing car. To be sure, Lakoka deserves a story on his own, because he was credited with reviving American Chrysler cars in the 1980s, and because of that he made a name for himself.

Shelby receives an open check for his mission and agrees. His team includes Roy Lynn (JG Field), Phil Remington (Ray McKinnon) and the brilliant English driver Ken Miles (Christian Bell), who is nervous and anti-teamwork that brings Pep's anger, and persuades Ford to restrict Miles' participation in the work to development and driving tests. . Of course, because this is a sports film, it follows a specific equation that does not free this kind of film, and everyone knows how the film will end, especially when Ford says: I want to be in the ring and look at the face of Ferrari the moment of loss.

Different end

Mangold takes the film away from the ring and away from the world of sports film genre, but that comes at a price. First, Mangold gets involved in a narrow equation. His film is no different from dozens of films about the stories of ambitious sports figures.

For example, the story begins with Ford lecturing his factory workers, threatening them with dismissal if someone does not come up with a new idea that takes the Ford car to new heights. This is followed by Ford's ambitious desire to break the opponent with his famous phrase: "I want to see his face at the moment of loss."

Then of course the two champions of the story differ and agree and cooperate, and we see the montage of building and developing the car and training Miles in preparation for the Grand Race and his leadership until he wins the race.

What's new is something that happens in the end, which we don't want to mention in order to leave the viewer the experience of exploring the film himself, which gives the film a different end, because it happens unconventional, and perhaps this Mangold artistic touch is finally clearer than the rest of the film. We can say that the villain of the film is not Ferrari, not the driver of the car 21 but Ford and Pip and their business decisions.

A cynical scene

There is good harmony between Demin in Texan accent and Bill, perhaps with his native English accent, intelligent, flexible and pragmatic, and even angry and excited Bill who is a winner. There is a cynical scene in which the two fight in front of Miles 'house. When Molly (Katrina Balf), Miles' wife, sees them, she comes to a chair from inside the house and sits in front of them. Bill performed well, but he was better at last year's "deputy", and Demin also performed well, but we saw him in better roles. Mangold relieves tension in the previous scene, but employs him for laughter, as in the scene that Shelby takes with Ford in the experience of driving the new car, the latter is terrified, and then collapses in a wave of crying shaking his existence, may be crying fear or joy of the birth of the new car. What Mangold does is marginalize the race in the story to focus on characters and performance, and here a problem occurs. The problem of relying on performance, and the marginalization of race cars in a sports film in the first place, resulting in slow in the film for speed. Dialogue scene, montage of building a car, Melodrama scene between Miles and Molly, followed by scene layout of the vehicle, details of its engine specifications, then Miles Dialogue and his son, who appears every five scenes just to react, followed by a quick scene.

In other words, the film does not give us an opportunity to interest and form an emotional link with the characters, and this feeling may not be found by car enthusiasts or engineers and mechanics who will inevitably understand and enjoy the technical details, which dominate the dialogues. Race scenes are good and Mangold filmed them to put the scenes inside the car with Miles, but there are dead spots that Mangold does not notice, or may not have known how to avoid them, or perhaps forced to get rid of them so that the film does not exceed two and a half hours.

We arrived at a stage with the films where we found that the film was not shown in the theaters, but that it includes the additional shots that the director was not able to include for his film due to time limitations, and put it in its version Extended Director's Cut on high-quality DVDs.

To view this topic in full, please click on this link.

A question

Question: What have the heroes of the story benefited from a dangerous race that has threatened the lives of drivers in more than one scene? Graduated from the film and you do not feel the value of an achievement that may end the life of a man, whether achieved or not. There is only one reason: the glory achieved by Ford Motor Company by defeating Ferrari, a convincing reason only for car enthusiasts!

The film is inspired by Henry Ford's true story and how he entered a race against Enzo Ferrari, which ended in a confrontation at the La Moon circuit in 1965 and 1966.

Shelby is accompanied by Ford in the test drive of the new car, the latter is terrified, and then collapses in a wave of crying shaking his existence, may be crying fear or joy of the birth of the new car.