Brought Back Memories of Sports Car Racing in the 1960's

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2019)

The Ford vs. Ferrari story is amazingly accurate for a Hollywood made movie. Like many others, I ran to Wikipedia to look up Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby. Miles was a great car racer but not well known outside of car racing circles.The movie lovingly recreates that era and throws in a first rate cast headlined by Damon and Bales, but the rest of the characters ring true. The race car scenes which grab you by the throat are realistic as hell and heart pounding. The scenes showing the introduction of the new Ford Mustang, I remember very well. There were huge crowds at the Ford dealers and the demand for the cars was tremendous. Car racing back in the 1960's was a deadly dangerous sport with very few of the safety features incorporated in today's race cars. The Ford GT 40 really was fast and could hit 220 mph on the straightaways which is what today's Indy cars do, just for comparison. Matt Damon does a great job as Carroll Shelby, but minimizes the way Shelby cut corners in how he sold his cars, and he was slapped on the wrist a few times for his car selling practices. This is one of the few movies today that I would actually buy. It is such a great story and just listening to the sounds those cars made is worth the price. There isn't much not to like in this movie and it is a good antidote to the real world we are living in today if only for a few hours. I loved this movie.