Film Review - Ferrari (2024)

Ferrari is the new film by Michael Mann and stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari who in 1957 is facing a crisis within his company Ferrari and in his personal life as his now ex-wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) still maintains an interest in the company while his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) looks after their young son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese) but when a dangerous 1,000 mile race comes on the horizon Enzo decides to bet it all on winning that race.

Ferrari is very much a middle of the road Michael Mann film for me, it is not a dumpster fire like 2009’s Public Enemies or 2015’s Blackhat were for me but nor is it up there with his best films like 1986’s Manhunter or 1993’s The Last of the Mohicans.

For starters both Driver and Cruz are good in this movie both in their individual scenes and especially in their scenes together and it was those scenes that I felt the film really come alive as it felt like Mann had 2 great actors ready to go at each other and he was waiting to press record and get it on film and their chemistry works really well, Cruz in particular was my favourite part of this film from her sadness to anger and ultimately heartbreak at what has happened to Enzo and her life with him now that they are no longer together and sometimes Cruz says this with her eyes and its great to see.

Plus the films racing scenes are pretty good even if at times its all too obvious that CGI has been used in some of the films car crash scenes as it looked a bit janky in spots.

But this movie has 2 big problems:

- The first of those is that this movie lacks a good race car driver character like we got with Christian Bale’s Ken Miles in Ford V Ferrari which James Mangold directed and Mann executive produced and not only was Bale great in that film with his accent and yelling at everyone and swearing his head off but he also served as a pivotal anchor point to that films car racing scenes in terms of giving you a character to really get behind and hope that they win.

Here that is absent and although Patrick Dempsey and his silver hair try their best he’s in too little of the film to really make that key difference that Bale did in FvF.

- And second Shailene Woodley is really bad in this film and her casting is almost as misplaced as Chris Hemsworth’s was in Blackhat where that film has the government people going “we need a great computer person” and then it cuts to Chris in prison doing what looks like his workout for Thor: Ragnarok and that film was fatally undermined by his casting and Woodley’s casting almost does similar damage as she just comes across as dull, lifeless, flat and boring in her scenes and she has not only no real chemistry with Driver but I just do not believe Driver’s character would leave someone as beautiful as Cruz’s Laura for someone like her and also at times she just looks bored to be there and that also bothered me.

All that said however Ferrari is a good enough film that’s worth a watch down the line mainly for Driver and Cruz, 3 out of 5.