Ford vs Ferrari is a good
film that's structure has been seen many times before. It adheres closely to the Hollywood
biographical drama formula just with a new setting of the titled auto
manufacturing companies competing to win a car race.
The true story of how Ford Motors
challenged the perennially dominant Ferrari racing team using automotive
designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and gifted British driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) is intriguing from
the basis alone. The film adaptation
does many things right: it establishes the rivaling feud between Ford and
Ferrari, sets up the key characters and their motives, displays the engineering
process and business working in an engaging fashion, and effectively sets up
the intensity, dangers, and skill required for the 24 Hours of Le Mans
endurance race. The latter two aspects are
impressive feats for capturing my attention given I know very little, nor care
much about cars and racing. My friend
who saw the film with me, however, is a car fanatic and loved the film’s
approach towards the subject matter. The film
also boasts a respectable cast of solid actors, an almost necessity for such a
by-the-books story.
Unfortunately, Ford vs Ferrari contains the
typical, fictional roadblocks and snags found in nearly every Hollywood biographical
drama. All the historical inaccuracies
added for unnecessary dramatic tension when the true-to-life drama is already
crazy potent enough. I’ve grown tired of seeing the
same-structured, cliche arguments where the antagonistic character says something
snobby and/or dickish and the good guy replies with some snarky comeback. I crave for sharper dialogue
where the antagonists aren't just complete assholes and can actually speak to
their opponents without coming across as major jerks. Ken Miles’ wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) ends up being a
prime source of unnecessary padding all for the clear sake of hitting those
diversity quotas. Nothing is inherently
sexist with having an all-male/primarily-male cast, nothing is inherently
sexist with having an all-female/primarily-female cast, nothing is sexist with
having any kind of balance between the two genders. Yet when writers and/or
directors shoehorn in characters specifically to appease the masses and not
because they wanted to, then it only serves to blotch the film’s quality—and
Mollie is quite evidently being shoehorned in for such reason.
There’s very
little attempt to hide that Mollie is only there to give Ford vs Ferrari its token
strong woman archetype. There's an entire section dedicated
to her that clearly did not happen in real life, bogs up the film's pacing, messes
up her characterization with a contradictory argument, and gives information that could
have been omitted entirely or explained elsewhere in a fraction of the scene's time. Ken’s son Peter (Noah Jupe), at least serves a storytelling
purpose as a greenhorn to the car racing world—being explained multiple mechanics
and/or activities for the novice viewers’s consideration (such as myself). The finale makes it painfully apparent how
irrelevant Mollie is beyond gender when it’s Peter who plays a prominent role in
the emotional final scene while she only makes a voiceless background
appearance. Ford vs Ferrari is an
overall good film with some very engaging sequences, yet suffers from an array
of clichés and unwanted padding that drives the film into some
less-than-stellar territory.
I advise you to such a site myself https://viooz4k.net/ Here you can just watch all your favorite movies without problems
ReplyDelete