Battle of Wills, Both On and Off the Racetrack

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2020)

The (mostly) true story of two passionate gear-heads and their tireless quest to unseat mighty Team Ferrari at the grueling 24-hour Le Mans endurance race. Armed, that is, with the financial backing (and all-too frequent corporate meddling) of Ford Motor Company. In that sense, it's a war on two fronts: they're playing catch-up against a more advanced opponent while also fending off the various obstacles and bad ideas tossed down from their own corporate brass.
Christian Bale and Matt Damon, somehow sharing the screen for the first time, provide all the personality this flick needs to maintain momentum, while the hair-raising cockpit scenes nail the hairpin turns. Bale plays the more fiery of the pair; a sparky, cocksure driver who comes out of near-retirement for this chance at immortality. Damon's man is full of piss and vinegar, too, but more amicable to the kind of machinations necessary for navigating a corporate American boardroom. From the first word, they're great together. It's not an easy relationship to define - blows are exchanged, often comically, more than once - but there's no arguing their kinship, even if both might brush it off as a mere working association. They both know the fine points of their job, and the slight quirks and deviations that make them essential to one another.
Several of the film's plot twists are telegraphed, even for those (like I) who didn't know the full story coming in, and it's guilty of occasionally dipping into the well of over-worn sports movie tropes, but otherwise it's an effective pulse-pounder.