Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in a handsome-looking but dull account of the rivalry between the US and Italian car-makers
Ford v
Ferrari is a great-looking, handsomely produced but tiringly acted and inert sports drama about two good ol’ boys from the self-admiring world of motor racing – which a character here wryly calls “turning left for four hours”. This picture goes straight ahead for two and a half.
Based on a true story, it is crammed with unearned emotional moments and factory-built male characters whose dedication to their sport we are expected to find adorable and heroic by turns. This is a standard-issue, middleweight biopic-type film, which comes complete with the now mandatory three factual sentences over the closing credits and the black-and-white photographs of the real-life people involved looking less attractive than the
Hollywood stars who played them. James Mangold directs, from a serviceable original script by playwright Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller.