Bale is a caricature

Rating: 3/10 (4 December 2019)

I kind of, sort of, walked out of this movie. Not because it was terrible or anything but I just didn't care about the characters. The movie also wasn't very "cinematic" although I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that. Now, I am not interested in racing but if you compare this movie to Rush, a movie I waited to see because I wasn't interested in the subject matter, it's night and day. I really enjoyed Rush. It exceeded my expectations by far. This movie was not very good.
The thing that bothered me most was Bale's performance and it might be the worst I've ever seen him do, although that's a pretty high bar. He plays a caricature of someone, not an actual character. And he ruins it for me because the whole family dynamic is awkward. There's 0 chemistry and it doesn't seem real in the least. I couldn't take him or the movie seriously. The scene when his wife is swerving all over the road and yelling at him was weird and out of nowhere. The son barely says a word.
The movie is way too long. Every scene seemed to be the same after two hours. Let's have more shots of Matt Damon's character standing in front of the sun. Let's start every scene out with some classic guitar playing for nostalgia's sake to get you excited. The only good scene was when Bale's character talks about the perfect lap, that's it.