Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B

I don’t want to spoil Ferrari—and if you want to get technical, you can’t spoil history—but I think it might do well for viewers to be warned: something almost absurdly horrific happens in the final act of this film, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about it.

I say “almost” only because it can’t exactly be absurd if it actually happened, and this incident did indeed happen, during the 1957 Mille Miglia, a road race across Italy. I already knew to expect some sort of tragic crash to occur, given what had already been seen many times in the film’s trailer. But, nothing could have prepared me for where that scene goes in the actual film, during which I exlaimed, loud enough for everyone in the theater to hear, “Jesus Christ!” It’s shocking what director Michael Mann chooses to depict onscreen here, which would be dismissed as ridiculous and unrealistic had it not been based on an actual event.

For some, perhaps, hearing this about Ferrari will pique the interest. It should also be noted, perhaps, that the visual effects, in both this and other crash sequences, are noticeably, let’s say, lower-budget. They’re serviceable, and they serve the story. Whether the carnage we see needed to be put onscreen is perhaps up for debate.

Also: Ferrari on the whole is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds, to say it features one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen onscreen (albeit clearly using actors who went unharmed). The story here is much more concerned with family drama, with Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) in a tense marriage with Laura (Penélope Cruz), a couple still grieving the death of their one son, while Enzo maintains a separate family with a woman named Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom Enzo has a little boy. On top of that, Laura is effectively Enzo’s business partner, having been given co-ownership of his factory during the war in an effort at thwarting Nazis.

Adam Driver’s transformation notwithstanding, Penélope Cruz is easily the best part of Ferrari, a tough negotiator and a woman with power far ahead of her time. Laura doesn’t take any shit, even if she openly tolerates Enzo’s infidelities. As she directly states within the first ten minutes of the film, they have an agreement.

I did find myself slightly distracted by this American film, telling an Italian story, with non-Italian actors speaking English but in surprisingly subtle Italian accents. (To its credit, Ferrari features none of the cartoonishly exaggerated accents of House of Gucci.) Driver and Woodley are both America; Cruz is Spanish. Are there any actual Italian actors in this film at all? Certainly none of the famous ones are, including Patrick Dempsey as Italan race car driver Piero Taruffi. Among the actors playing all these characters, the accents are so understated that sometimes they just sound like their American selves. Reportedly, some of the people in Europe aren’t thrilled about it.

Nevertheless, I was engaged enough by Ferrari—just not enough to tell anyone to go out of their way to watch it. To be honest, it might be that Michael Mann, a director who has offered a few great movies, has lost his edge. Perhaps he did a while ago; the man is eighty years old, after all. He’s in the same club as Ridley Scott (age 86), who this year gave us Napoleon, a similar film in that it didn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, but had some memorably executed scenes. Ferrari, for its part, is more tightly edited and thus more coherent, making it a slightly superior film.

Indeed, Ferrari would seem to have a lot going for it: assured editing and cinematography, and uniformly competent performers. There’s not as much actual racing as you might expect, nor did I find most of the racing footage especially exciting—but, it’s well shot. That’s what makes Ferrari a pecular specimen, though: a whole lot of greatness went into its construction, and yet somehow it still can’t manage to be much better than fine.

*Adam Driver ironically does not drive much in this movie.*

Overall: B