I’ve seen a few movies about car company owners in recent years. Last year, Lamborghini came out starring Frank Grillo, and a few years back.  Ford V Ferrari was released. Now a more in-depth film about Enzo Ferrari is coming out from Michael Mann and starring Adam Driver as the titular car company owner. This may have been more about his relationship with his wife and business partner than cars and their drivers. No pun intended.

Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is the Owner of the famous car brand from Italy known as Ferrari. He has a lot on his plate from running a car manufacturer to overseeing a race team. He gets help from his wife Laura (Penelope Cruz) who runs things from a financial standpoint. The company has fallen on some tough times in 1957 when this film takes place. Their relationship isn’t great either. Enzo, despite people’s better judgment, tries to salvage the company by showing the world that it has the best race cars.

Michael Mann is a director who is known for his realistic style of filmmaking.  Where the movies look like they can exist in the real world. He decides to forego this style of filmmaking for this film. The movie has a period look to it and a muted style at times. One specific racing sequence looked straight out of old television footage.  It was pretty neat. The racing sequences in general were shot very well. I just wish the biopic aspect of the story was better.

As mentioned the husband and wife duo were the main focus for most of the nearly two-hour run time but Mann complimented them by adding a few actors who are known to the general public. Patrick Dempsey, Jack O’Connell, and Gabriel Leon all play race car drivers. They are a big part of the Ferrari racing team that competes in a race at the end of the film. A key player in this story is Lina Lardi who is Enzo Farri’s mistress. He keeps her hidden away in a villa with their son. This is part of what makes Ferrari such a complicated man. He lives this double life.

Adam Driver has become one of the it men when it comes to acting in the last decade or so. He’s done everything from Star Wars films, he played Kilo Ren, to indie dramas like Marriage Story and White Noise. Both writer and director Noah Baum. His work in House of Gucci was okay. Here he uses a pretty good Italian accent to play Ferrari but it seemed to me might have been miscast as this car mogul. He’s used Accents before and done a bit of comedy here or there.  He didn’t fully click with me as this character. Even the driving scenes seemed staged and had too much CG. Here’s hoping his next project is better because he’s too good an actor to be in bad or subpar movies. 

Penelope Cruz had been doing solid work for decades now. She hadn’t played a vengeful woman like this though before. She is doing an angry version of herself and it wasn’t pretty. As a fan of hers, I’d rather see her doing some of the things she’s done with Pedro Almodovar in the past. That being said, she gives the best performance in the film. Her subplot where she is investigating her husband’s infidelity is my favorite part of the movie. It’s true though or it wouldn’t be in here. It’s just not what I thought I was going to get in a film titled Ferrari.  Not that it’s bad in any way, because it’s not.

Ferrari is a bit of a mixed bag. It has very good racing sequences and a good performance from Cruz as this angry woman.  Driver as Enzo Ferrari, may have been miscast from my perspective. The subplot involving Woodley I could have done without. Mann gives viewers this look of this character that would seem at first glance as this bigger than life individual, but he’s flawed and has problems.  The racing is what makes him above the ordinary. This )movie was just ordinary. Not great like the brand car this man has his name attached to. I’m sad because I was looking forward to something better.

3 stars 

Dan Skip Allen