{"id":2688,"date":"2019-12-07T09:01:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T14:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2019-12-07T09:01:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T14:01:15","slug":"movie-review-ford-versus-ferrari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/07\/movie-review-ford-versus-ferrari\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review: Ford versus Ferrari"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Let’s\nface it; good movies about engineering are few and far between. Hollywood seems\nto be convinced that any movie that doesn’t have fights or romance can’t\nsucceed while solving problems with logic and technical skill is just so\nboring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s why I’m so pleased that this year we have two, ‘The Current War’ earlier this year, see my post of the 30th<\/sup> of October, and now ‘Ford versus Ferrari’.  Like most stories that are based on history ‘Ford versus Ferrari’ needs a little background information at the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Poster for ‘Ford versus Ferrari’ from 20th Century Fox Pictures. (Credit: Galleria.com.mt)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At the dawn of the 1960s Ford Motor Corporation was running a distant second to its huge rival General Motors in car manufacturing. Ford’s chairman, Henry Ford the second, the grandson of it’s famous founder was looking for some way to get his company out of the doldrums it was in, enter Lee Iacocca, played by Jon Bernthal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Real Lee Iacocca with his brainchild, the Mustang. (Credit: Fortune.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Iacocca\nrecognized that the baby boomers were growing up, with driver’s licenses and\nmoney in their pockets and they were looking for something sexy to drive.\nHistorically Iacocca’s biggest achievement was his design of the Mustang, which\nwas definitely the car boomers wanted to drive. I’ve owned five of them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another\nidea that Iacocca had to make Ford cars seem sexy was for the company to join\nthe international racing circuit by buying the small Racing car company\nFerrari, famous for it’s victories at the 24 hours at Le Mans. Enzo Ferrari,\nowner of Ferrari motors, turned down Ford’s offer however. More than that,\nFerrari insulted both Ford cars and Henry Ford II himself. Henry Ford now\nwanted revenge and he had the money to buy it, enter Carroll Shelby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelby, played by Matt Damon is the center of ‘Ford versus Ferrari’, an engineer, auto designer and racecar driver who has retired from driving for health reasons. To do the actual driving Shelby hires Ken Miles, played by Christian Bale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Matt Damon (l) plays Carroll Shelby while Christian Bale (r) plays Ken Miles. (Credit: Rolling Stone)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Together Shelby and Miles take on Ferrari, the bureaucrats at Ford and occasionally each other in their effort to build the GT40 MkII. Their chief opponent during much of the movie is not Ferrari but rather Ford Executive Vice President Leo Beebe who just sees Miles as an unreliable, non-team player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Ford GT40 Mk II. (Credit: Robb Report)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\nshould be noted that the families of both Leo Beebe and Henry Ford II have\ncriticized the portrayal of their relatives and refused to cooperate with the\nfilming of ‘Ford versus Ferrari’ as did Ford Motor Corporation itself. That’s\none of the problems with Hollywood in general. Sometimes, in an effort to\nincrease the dramatic tension in a story real people can become nothing more\nthan cardboard villains for the ‘good guys’ to fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they develop the GT40 MkII, the Ford team participates in several races including the Daytona 500 but the climax of the movie is the 24hrs at Le Mans in 1966. The racing sequences in ‘Ford versus Ferrari’ are exceptionally well done giving the movie a degree of excitement rare in historic films where the outcome is an established fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Racing scene from ‘Ford versus Ferrari’. (Credit: 20th Century Fox)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As\nto the performances, all of the actors do a good job, Caitriona Balfe as Ken\nMiles’ wife Mollie in particular deserves a special mention. Nevertheless it is\nMatt Damon and Christian Bale who dominate the movie, both of their\nperformances receiving mention as having Oscar potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all the entire production of ‘Ford versus Ferrari’ is top notch with real sets and real cars and a minimum of CGI. One thing that I found remarkable as well as amusing was the enormous number of classic early 60s cars they managed to find just to use in the background of various scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the best parts of ‘Ford versus Ferrari’ was the way they managed to evoke a real feeling of the 1960s. Caitriona Balfe as Mollie Miles. (Credit: Collider)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

‘Ford\nversus Ferrari’, along with ‘The Current War’ is the sort of movie I’d like to\nsee more of, a movie about people who succeed because they known what they’re\ndoing rather than just because they can beat up somebody else. So if you get\nthe chance go see ‘Ford versus Ferrari’, it’s a wild ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s face it; good movies about engineering are few and far between. Hollywood seems to be convinced that any movie that doesn’t have fights or romance can’t succeed while solving problems with logic and technical skill is just so boring. That’s why I’m so pleased that this year we have two, ‘The Current War’ earlier … Continue reading “Movie Review: Ford versus Ferrari”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[933,927,934,926],"class_list":["post-2688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-ford-gt40-mkii","tag-le-mans-1966","tag-lee-iacocca-and-the-mustang","tag-movie-review-ford-versus-ferrari"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2688"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2688\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}