Ferrari: A Disturbing Crash-For-The-Ages Aside, Michael Mann's Biopic Tells a Solid Story of a Driven Man

By Chris Knight

Rating: B

I can’t get the crash out of my head.

Sorry if this counts as a spoiler, but during the thousand-mile Mille Miglia that dominates the second half of the biopic Ferrari, one of Enzo Ferrari’s racers suffers a blown tire that sends his car careening into the air - and then down into a crowd of roadside spectators. Five of the nine killed are children. The driver also perished.

It’s nowhere near the worst crash in motorsports history. That dubious record was set in 1955 (just two years before Ferrari takes place) at Le Mans, when 83 people were killed and 120 injured by crash wreckage that flew into the crowd.

Adam Driver plays the legendary auto and race car mogul in Ferrari

What’s unusual about this one is director Michael Mann’s decision to dramatize it with a quick, scary shot of the car as it ploughs though the onlookers. We then get a pan over the bodies, some of them cut in half.

It’s gruesome, and will strike some as insensitive at best, perhaps gratuitous. Clearly computer-generated, it could function as the latest exhibit in the ongoing debate of should-you-show-something-just-because-you-can?

But let’s leave that argument to one side for now. It’s just a single brief scene in more than two hours of movie, and while the entirety of the film isn’t wonderful - after a glitzy premiere in Venice with a reported seven-minute standing ovation it has mostly disappeared from awards talk - Ferrari is still a solid story.

Even so, much of that solidity comes not from Adam Driver, heavily made up to play Enzo Ferrari, a man 20 years his senior. No, it’s Penélope Cruz who steals the show, playing Enzo’s wife, Laura, a woman 15 years her JUNIOR. Her portrayal of a woman wronged by her philandering husband, even as she controls half the automakers’ business assets, makes her one of the more fascinating female characters in the movies this year.

The “other woman” is Lina Lardi, played by Shailene Woodley, who at 32 is about 15 years younger than her character would have been - some real age-blind casting in this movie. She also has the weakest Italian accent of the bunch.

But the love triangle is especially fascinating because Lina and Enzo have a young son, whereas his only child with his wife died at age 24, just a year before the events of this movie. So, between issues of control of the foundering company (which was burning through cash in pursuit of racing glory), a possible heir and matrimonial love, Ferrari was living through complicated times.

The decision to focus on just this one annus horribilis was probably a good one, although even in its narrow scope, the movie finds itself forced to jettison some minor-character development. I never did get a sense of who the various drivers were, nor Ferrari’s competitors, colleagues and lackeys, beyond the fact that his banker was clearly terrified of Laura.

And his mother (played by Daniela Piperno) calls out for more screen time, especially after her offhand remark that “the wrong son died,” referring to the death of Enzo’s brother in 1916, the same year his father passed. Enzo comes back at her by suggesting that when one of his drivers dies in an accident on a test track, it’s the man’s mother’s fault for meddling in his love life. “When a mother interferes in this business, death usually follows,” he says icily.

Enzo emerges as a man driven (pardon the pun) to succeed in his chosen profession. Before he became an entrepreneur, he was just a humble racecar driver himself. But the single-minded pursuit of speed, records and glory has its cost, both in lives and money lost. (It’s noted that while Jaguar races to sell cars, Ferrari sells cars in order to race.)

It was not a forgiving time for the sport. These days, drivers are strapped in like pilots, protected by flame-retardant clothing, roll bars and five-point harnesses. Back in the 1950s the cars were little more than cockpits on wheels, without so much as a seatbelt. There might be a few hay bales by the side of the track.

And then as now, there was a morbid fascination in the notion of a crash taking a driver and car out of a race. But be careful what you wish for.

Ferrari. Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, and Penelope Cruz. Opens in theatres Monday, Dec. 25.