An enjoyable Oscar bait movie

Rating: 6/10 (15 November 2019)

Ford v Ferrari is clearly comes from a place of heart and a very talented director. The car races in this movie are dramatic, incredibly tense, and very well shot. There's a lot of production value and effort that went into making this film and it shows. The directing was probably the best part, no real issues there. I love James Mangold as well as almost all his films, so I'll always support him and I can't wait to see what else he does. This film was pretty strong from a technical standpoint, the cinematography, the editing, the sound mixing & editing, and the visuals were all great. The acting was pretty great, especially from Christian Bale. I really enjoyed Matt Damon and his performance, as well as the endlessly fun, charming, and believable friendship and dynamic that he shares with Bale. I liked his character and I think he had enough development for what screen time he had, but at the same time his character didn't feel that special or unique, but I did enjoy his character. In terms of acting though I think Matt Damon gets pretty outshined by Christian Bale. That just goes to show that he's one of the best actors working today, he worked on this film coming off of Vice, and if you've seen that movie then you would know that he looks radically different in this film. It's kind of amazing how much and how quickly he can lose and gain weight or a role. He's an actor who can disappear into his characters and he never feels like he's acting, and he can play such a wide range of characters, I mean this guy played Batman for crying out loud. He fully dedicates himself to all of his roles and he's one of my favorite actors who will always have my undying gratitude. In fact this might be his best performance that I've seen from him in a long time. His character is very well developed and the vulnerability on display is captivating to say the least. The film is very fast paced for the most part and it was pretty fun to watch. It got a little boring at times, and there were some points in the middle that lost my investment, but other than that this film kept my attention for the majority of the run time. And yeah the story is a little drawn out, not everything in this film was necessary or justified, they could've trimmed off maybe 20 minutes. My last issue is that it's one of those movies that is pretty pandering in terms of it's message and it's story, it's fairly cookie cutter and predictable. And it's one of those films that is just screaming that it's going for Oscars and it's very obvious, it's kind of an Oscar bait movie is what I'm trying to say. But despite some issues I really enjoyed this film, it's not amazing and I'm in no rush to see it again, but I'd recommend seeing this one in theaters, because the sound and visuals are so immersive that it makes this film a very theatrical experience. See it with a good sound set up as well.