Ferrari review: Buckle up, old bean, for a ride with echoes of The Italian Job, writes BRIAN VINER

By Brian Viner[1]

Published: 23:08, 21 December 2023 | Updated: 23:17, 21 December 2023

Ferrari (15, 130 mins)

Verdict: High-octane

Rating:

Aspiring novelists in creative writing classes are told never to begin a book with a character waking up and getting out of bed, on the basis that it's the most prosaic, least gripping start to a story.

The rules of cinema are slightly different but not that different, so when Ferrari begins in just such a fashion, it's a fair bet that there's some significance to it, as Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver[2]) commences his day. Sure enough, it quickly becomes clear that the bed is that of his mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley[3]), with whom he has a son.

Waiting for him at home is his fierce wife, Laura (Penelope Cruz[4] in glorious form). She knows that he is habitually unfaithful to her but they have a firm house rule: he must be there by the time the maid arrives with morning coffee.

Enraged that he has broken his pledge, she fires a gun at him. And so the starting grid is prepared for a film that looks like being quite a ride.

It chronicles a tumultuous year, 1957, in Enzo's life. His eponymous motor-racing team has spawned a sports-car manufacturing business, but unlike its competitor Jaguar, which only races so it can sell road cars, Ferrari only sells cars to fund the racing operation.

Yet by 1957 the equation isn't working.

Despite, or maybe partly because of the high fatality rate, Enzo is hooked on racing. He describes it as 'our deadly passion, our terrible joy'. But his beloved cars are driving him towards bankruptcy, forcing him to consider a partnership with Fiat, or even Ford.

But Ferrari is tremendously stylish and, for the most part, director Michael Mann does a fine job, especially with the devastating crash scene, which caused a sharp collective intake of breath when I first saw it at this year's Venice Film Festival

The rules of cinema are slightly different but not that different, so when Ferrari begins in just such a fashion, it's a fair bet that there's some significance to it, as Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) commences his day

Despite, or maybe partly because of the high fatality rate, Enzo is hooked on racing

To promote the brand, he desperately needs one of his drivers to win the forthcoming Mille Miglia, the mighty endurance race for which the favourite is Britain's Stirling Moss (Ben Collins).

Little though he knows it, this itself is heading for a screeching halt after 30 years, following a tragic crash involving a Ferrari car.

Meanwhile, Laura finds out about Lina and Enzo's illegitimate son, her distress compounded by the death of her own son, 24-year-old Dino, a year earlier.

As in a racing-car engine, there are lots of components in this film, and they all need to work in perfect sync, which occasionally they don't. The aptly named Driver gives a curiously low-key performance as the ruthless, charismatic Enzo, almost as if he is self-conscious about his cod-Italian accent, which he last took for a spin as recently as 2021, in the interminable House Of Gucci.

But Ferrari is tremendously stylish and, for the most part, director Michael Mann does a fine job, especially with the devastating crash scene, which caused a sharp collective intake of breath when I first saw it at this year's Venice Film Festival.

His movie has taken an awfully long time to reach the screen; indeed, the writer is Troy Kennedy Martin, who died in 2009 and was old enough to have written The Italian Job (1969). In fact, if you listen closely you can tell, as when Enzo's favourite driver Peter Collins (Jack O'Connell), another Brit, refers to people as 'old bean'.

The romantics among us should cherish the fact that The Italian Job and Ferrari, released almost 55 years apart, share a screenwriter.

Next Goal Wins (12A, 104 mins)

Verdict: Definite red card

Rating:

The writer and director of Next Goal Wins is Taika Waititi, the New Zealander whose impressive credits include What We Do In The Shadows (2014) and Jojo Rabbit (2019).

I consequently had high hopes for his comic dramatisation of an improbable true story already told in a 2014 documentary of the same title, about the redemption of the American Samoa football team after losing a 2001 World Cup qualifier to Australia by a record score, 31-0.

Disappointingly, it is a lousy miskick of a film.

Michael Fassbender plays Thomas Rongen, the troubled Dutch-American coach given the unenviable job of moulding American Samoa's motley collection of players (including one who is transgender) into a team that might eventually win an international game.

I consequently had high hopes for his comic dramatisation of an improbable true story already told in a 2014 documentary of the same title, about the redemption of the American Samoa football team

Waititi picks an open goal of a subject -- a classic sporting underdog story -- and misses

Usually so reliable, Fassbender gives a strangely awkward performance while the always-excellent Elisabeth Moss hardly gets a look in as Rongen's estranged wife.

Worse, in trying to make the islanders seem charmingly eccentric, Waititi instead depicts them as idiotic bumpkins. But, worst of all, he invites us to laugh at one fatal road accident presented as broad comedy (when one of the island's rare talented players is flattened by a bus), while another (the death of Rongen's child) is presented as tragedy. I found that offensive.

Either traffic fatalities are tragic or they're not.

He's too competent a filmmaker not to squeeze some fun from all this, but really Waititi picks an open goal of a subject -- a classic sporting underdog story -- and misses.

A review of Ferrari ran during the Venice Film Festival.

Both films open in cinemas on Boxing Day.

Cats In The Museum (PG, 83 mins)

Rating:

This film is a real curiosity, not least because, as the credits make clear, it is an animation made in Russia.

I'm not, generally speaking, in favour of cultural boycotts since they invariably target creative people who should hardly be blamed for their country's perceived misbehaviour, and probably oppose it vehemently themselves.

But Cats In The Museum feels a little (uncomfortably) like a state-sponsored Russian propaganda vehicle.

Our ginger feline hero (voiced rather woodenly by Jordan Worsley) has lived all his life at sea until he is shipwrecked and befriended by a mouse called Maurice, who calls him Vincent (after Vincent Van Gogh).

Maurice, you see, is an art enthusiast, although not in any conventional sense, because his family's long-established appreciation of great paintings comes from eating them. 'There is nothing more delicious in this world than authentic art,' he says.

Cats In The Museum feels a little (uncomfortably) like a state-sponsored Russian propaganda vehicle

Our ginger feline hero (voiced rather woodenly by Jordan Worsley) has lived all his life at sea until he is shipwrecked and befriended by a mouse called Maurice, who calls him Vincent (after Vincent Van Gogh)

'My dad took a bite out of Modigliani, Grandpa gnawed on Caravaggio...'

Together, the pair end up at St Petersburg's famous Hermitage, grandly described as the greatest museum in the world and soon to house (this is the bit you can imagine Putin approving) the Mona Lisa.

There, the priceless paintings are guarded by a group of his fellow cats, so Vincent, who feels beholden to Maurice, has a dilemma.

Parents, too, will have a dilemma, since Cats In The Museum is the only release this Christmas likely to appeal to young children, and lasts a reassuringly sensible 83 minutes, but is a) a bit weird and b) Russian.

References

1. ^ Brian Viner (www.dailymail.co.uk)
2. ^ Adam Driver (www.dailymail.co.uk)
3. ^ Shailene Woodley (www.dailymail.co.uk)
4. ^ Penelope Cruz (www.dailymail.co.uk)