Ford vs Ferrari is pure entertainment, an epic sports/western about male friendship&passion for something. Nostalgic tribute to old Hollywood movies that are no longer made.

Rating: 10/10 (17 November 2019)

The director of the film James Mangold himself claims in interviews that he shot 'Saving Private Ryan' in the reverse, a film that unfolds gradually, and in the third act shows all its beauty, in a monumental scene portraying the course of the great and one of the toughest car races in the world - Le Mans, during which racers drove all day and night.
At first, however, I would like to briefly address the loud and polarizing opinions about this film that have already appeared.
So the ultra-left side (swjs) already thinks that this movie is a step backwards, because it focuses on the friendship of two white men and generally it is a movie packed with alpha men fighting for power. Of course, this is unfair simplification and not true.
This film tells a classic story of David vs Goliath, a story of beautiful friendship between two passionate people. On the surface this is a film about a duel between Ford and Ferrari in Le Mans, but if we dive deeper, it is truly a story about eternal struggle between corporation and artists (which can also be transferred to the film industry itself).
Therefore, people should forget about politics at least once, especially if we are in the world of art, cinema, film, because pushing politics into everything becomes really devastating and toxic, art / films are given contexts that simply do not exist in these specific cases. Ford and Ferrari is a nostalgic return to the old cinema, yes, it talks mainly about men, but also about their passion, family and love. About small- big things that are simple and present in everyone's life, it is a film for everyone.
Other opinions that I heard are that the whole story is too simple and predictable, and the characters are not shown enough off the race track, too little character study. First of all, the allegation about the simplicity of this story is absurd, because the director clearly wanted to make such a film - it's not just a car film, but a classic western as the director himself confirmed in an interview for The Times : ''As much as I felt like I was making a race movie, I was making Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a movie about friendship " - he said. And it's true.
This film ticks off every known point in the classic western story, in which you can find a duel between the good and the bad, fight between the charming 'outlaw' poets of the wheel and the great, bad, big bosses of something much bigger. Perhaps, as some say, Mangold's mistake was focusing too much on the conflict of bureaucracy - the racetrack, but as I read in interviews, the script was re-written several times, it was supposed to be an old classic cinema about male friendship and hardships and it works. And yes - from time to time, we need to take a break from the over-intellectualised and psychologically intense cinema and we simply need such pure entertainment, with a dose of pathos, emotions, great collective scenes and two very pleasant acting performances.
And now back to these two main characters. Bale and Damon play two geniuses, one of whom can communicate with the rest of the world like a normal human and belong to a larger community (Damon's Shelby) and the other (Bale's Miles), is a total freak, an outsider incompatible with anyone and anything except maybe his wife and son, exuberant eccentric. But it is exactly this '' separateness '', internal life, loneliness and quirks of Miles, that can lead to the defeat of the invincible Ferrari. These two make the film from beginning to end and the chemistry between them is great. The duo dynamics provide us with a few really hilarious scenes, one of which deserves special attention - the fight scene near Miles's home. Bale and Damon are excellent comedy-wise in this scene, as middle-aged daddies pathetically trying to knock each other down with bread or a trash can lid.
For me, these two performances deserve recognition, because Damon and Bale did what they could with the script they got. They both did a lot of work.
However, if I had to choose one, I would choose Bale. Bale plays Ken Miles, the maverick British racing driver really brilliantly. His energy, the entire digging into the psychology of the character, but also into his physicality - Christian is a master of total acting. Pay attention to the work of his arms at the cinema - just like Miles, and yet there are so few video clips with Miles. Bale's acting is not at all 'too big', Miles is just like that in this movie - explosive, impulsive, full of passion, but also has a tart language without a filter for those who want to manipulate him. Also, let's not forget that Bale spoke personally to Miles's son Peter, as he prepared for the role.
Miles was a bona-fide eccentric, and his cockpit monologues have something of Top Gear about them.
"Learn to drive, you pillock!" he roars as someone cuts him up. "More of that please, giddy up!" he shouts when the car responds. "This feels like a bag of squirrels!" he yells when it doesn't. Miles was from Birmingham, but Bale's version has more than a touch of Yorkshire. He is basically an unholy hybrid of Jeremy Clarkson, Alan Partridge and Geoffrey Boycott.
"Christian had this remarkable list of Brummie expressions he made on a wadded-up piece of notepaper" Mangold said in The Times interview "I'd like to frame it. People said that Miles liked to talk to himself while he was driving and we hadn't really written any ongoing mutterings for him. So between takes when he was in the car, Christian had this piece of paper: 'Your face is redder than a spiked arse . . . let's not go round the Wrekin (Black Country slang for going the long way).' " I find this anecdote hilarious.
According to the director, double-decker rigs allowed Bale and co to be filmed in the cars while they were driven by professional drivers sitting on the roof. "So the actors are moving through space at 100 miles an hour, they're amid other traffic all being driven by pros, but they're allowed to act, remember their lines, take notes." Or, in Bale's case, swear like a trooper.
Bale's character is certainly, heightened (but as I wrote this is Miles in this story) hurling wrenches as freely as he chucks insults. Mangold thinks the performance expresses "a lot of the joy in Christian's soul. So many of his roles, in a very direct contradiction of who he is in life, are just very grim. The playfulness rarely gets a chance to shine."
With Phoenix, as with Bale and Daniel Day Lewis, "you're not even sure where the acting stops", Mangold said. "There's a kind of danger.'' and he added : ''Matt, Christian, Joaquin, Russell Crowe, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert De Niro: they come to the set to play. They're the opposite of tricky - they want to be directed and they've worked with many great directors, so they have a great deal of trust.''
And for all these reasons, for me Christian Bale is actually the most fascinating actor in today's film world. He is the most unique and unpredictable actor of modern actors. He always turns left when everyone else turns right, and vice versa - goes straight when the others turn. His choices are quite unusual, they never go with fashion, with mainstream.
In the previous year, he played without hesitation in the very polarizing '' Vice '' and there is no doubt that he angered many on the right side of the political scene, and today he plays in an old-fashioned western - sport film about purely male friendship, which, as I can see, has already annoyed some feminists and ultra-leftists.
But Christian only goes his own ways, just like Ken Miles, and chooses roles that challenge him, not because of political correctness. As he has shown more than once, he does not care who he can anger with his dark, witty, sardonic and self-deprecating sense of humor (you can see it in many interviews) and I absolutely love it.
Finally, that's why Christian is a brilliant actor, one of a kind, but also a chameleon - because I've read thousands of comments online about him and no one actually has a clue. But James Mangold, who is friends with Bale, gave a great IndieWire interview about the film and Bale, one great quote: '' I felt the role was close to Bale and prayed he would do it. He's a model to me of artistic perseverance and flexibility. He'll text you with thoughts and free associations about the character. It's all incredible food. He's a wonderful father, loving husband, great friend. He's not interested in being famous. He drives a pickup truck, he's grounded in the world, he raced motorcycles but had to stop when he got hurt, when he had kids. There are so many parts of Ken in Christian, who's a perfectionist. He's trying to achieve something for himself. It's magical to direct someone like that because they draw you into their own idealism. You feel that energy; it permeates the set''.
Like Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, Le Mans '66 is about "the transition moment for men in the Sixties as the world is changing from underneath them", Mangold says. With their nonchalant machismo and hands-on practicality, Miles and Shelby are an endangered species, as Leonardo DiCaprio's and Brad Pitt's characters were in Quentin Tarantino's movie. Mangold seems a bit like that too. Not a dinosaur, but one of those muscular all-rounders who would have thrived in the golden age of Tinseltown.
He smiles. "I'd be very happy 50 years ago, in the Hollywood system." He says he's trapped, but he has always been "a wanderer in terms of genre", from cops to cowboys, asylum inmates to country singers, superhero pensioners to retro racers. He thinks his versatility has been "almost to his detriment". Nonsense. Mangold is just that quaint, old-fashioned thing: a really good director.
Let this be the ultimate encouragement. Ford vs Ferrari is an epic, old-fashioned cinema, no CGI, they had car replicas, for that reason only it's worth watching in the cinema, on a big screen.