Ferrari review: Buckle up, old bean, for a drive with echoes of The Italian Job, writes BRIAN VINER
Ferrari (15, 130 minutes)
Pronunciation: High octane
Aspiring novelists in creative writing classes are told never to start a book with a character waking up and getting out of bed, because this is the most prosaic and least poignant beginning to a story.
The lines of the movie are slightly different, but not that different, so if Ferrari starts off like that, it’s a good bet there’s some meaning to it as Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) starts his day. Sure enough, it soon becomes clear that the bed is that of his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom he has a son.
Waiting for him at home is his fierce wife Laura (Penelope Cruz in glorious form). She knows he is usually unfaithful to her, but they have a standing house rule: he must be there by the time the maid arrives with morning coffee. Furious that he broke his promise, she fires a gun at him. And so the starting grid is prepared for a film that looks to be quite a ride.
It describes a tumultuous year, 1957, in Enzo’s life. Its eponymous motorsport team has spawned a sports car manufacturing company, but unlike its competitor Jaguar, which races only to sell road cars, Ferrari only sells cars to finance its racing operation. But in 1957 the comparison no longer works.
Despite, or perhaps partly because of, the high mortality rate, Enzo is addicted to racing. He describes it as ‘our deadly passion, our terrible joy’. But his beloved cars drive him towards bankruptcy, forcing him to consider a partnership with Fiat or even Ford.
But Ferrari is immensely stylish and director Michael Mann does a fine job for the most part, especially with the devastating crash scene, which caused a sharp collective intake of breath when I first saw it at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
The rules of cinema are slightly different, but not that different, so if Ferrari starts off like that, it’s a good bet there’s some meaning to it as Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) starts his day.
Despite, or perhaps partly because of, the high mortality rate, Enzo is addicted to racing
To promote the brand, he urgently needs one of his drivers to win the upcoming Mille Miglia, the mighty endurance race for which Briton Stirling Moss (Ben Collins) is the favorite. Although he doesn’t know it, this is heading to an abrupt end after thirty years, after a tragic accident involving a Ferrari car.
Meanwhile, Laura finds out about Lina and Enzo’s illegitimate son, and her grief is compounded by the death of her own son, 24-year-old Dino, a year earlier.
Like a race car engine, there are a lot of components in this movie, and they all have to work in perfect sync, which sometimes isn’t the case. The aptly named Driver gives a strangely understated performance as the ruthless, charismatic Enzo, almost as if he’s self-conscious about his cod-Italian accent, which he only last toured the interminable House Of Gucci in 2021.
But Ferrari is immensely stylish and director Michael Mann does a fine job for the most part, especially with the devastating crash scene, which drew a sharp collective intake of breath when I first saw it at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
It took an awfully long time for his film to hit the screen; the writer is indeed Troy Kennedy Martin, who died in 2009 and was old enough to have written The Italian Job (1969). If you listen carefully, you can even hear it, like when Enzo’s favorite driver Peter Collins (Jack O’Connell), another Brit, calls people “old bean.”
The romantics among us should cherish that The Italian Job and Ferrari, published almost 55 years apart, share a screenwriter.
Next goal wins (12A, 104 minutes)
Pronunciation: Clear red card
The writer and director of Next Goal Wins is Taika Waititi, the New Zealander whose impressive credits include What We Do In The Shadows (2014) and Jojo Rabbit (2019).
I therefore had high hopes for his comedic dramatization of an unlikely true story already told in a 2014 documentary of the same title, about the American Samoa football team’s redemption after losing a 2001 World Cup qualifier by a record score of Australia, 31-0. Disappointingly, it’s a lousy misfire of a film.
Michael Fassbender plays Thomas Rongen, the troubled Dutch-American coach who is given the unenviable task of turning American Samoa’s motley crew of players (including one who is transgender) into a team that could eventually win an international competition.
I therefore had high expectations for his comedic dramatization of an unlikely true story that was already told in a 2014 documentary of the same title, about the redemption of the American Samoa football team.
Waititi takes an open target of a subject – a classic sporting underdog story – and misses
Fassbender is generally so reliable that he gives an oddly awkward performance, while the always excellent Elisabeth Moss is barely noticeable as Rongen’s estranged wife.
Worse, in an attempt to make the islanders seem charmingly eccentric, Waititi instead portrays them as idiotic country bumpkins. But worst of all, he invites us to laugh at a fatal traffic accident presented as a broad comedy (in which one of the island’s rare talented players is crushed by a bus), while another (death van Rongen’s child) is presented as a tragedy. I found that insulting. Road deaths are either tragic or not.
He’s too competent a filmmaker not to get some fun out of it, but basically Waititi takes an open target of a subject – a classic sporting underdog story – and misses.
A review of Ferrari ran during the Venice Film Festival. Both films will be in cinemas on Boxing Day.
Cats in the Museum (PG, 83 min)
This film is a real curiosity, not least because, as the end credits make clear, it is an animation made in Russia.
In general, I am not in favor of cultural boycotts, as they invariably target creative people who can hardly be blamed for their country’s perceived misconduct, and are likely to vehemently oppose it themselves.
But Cats In The Museum feels a bit (uncomfortably) like a state-sponsored Russian propaganda vehicle.
Our ginger cat hero (voiced rather woodenly by Jordan Worsley) lived his entire life at sea until he was shipwrecked and befriended by a mouse named Maurice, who calls him Vincent (after Vincent van Gogh).
Maurice is, in fact, an art lover, although not in the conventional sense of the word, as his family’s long-standing appreciation for great paintings comes from eating them. “There is nothing more wonderful in this world than authentic art,” he says.
Cats In The Museum feels a bit (uncomfortably) like a state-sponsored Russian propaganda vehicle
Our ginger cat hero (voiced rather woodenly by Jordan Worsley) lived his entire life at sea until he was shipwrecked and befriended by a mouse named Maurice, who calls him Vincent (after Vincent van Gogh).
‘My father took a bite out of Modigliani, grandpa gnawed on Caravaggio…’
Together the two end up in the famous Hermitage of St. Petersburg, grandly described as the largest museum in the world, which will soon (one imagines Putin approve) house the Mona Lisa.
There, the priceless paintings are guarded by a group of his fellow cats, leaving Vincent, who feels obligated to Maurice, with a dilemma.
Parents will also be faced with a dilemma, as Cats In The Museum is the only release this Christmas that is likely to appeal to young children, running a reassuringly sensible 83 minutes but being a) a bit weird and b) Russian.