FORD V FERRARI (US - 2019) Directed by James Mangold. Written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller. Cast: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Jon Bernthal, Caitriona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Noah Jupe, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon, JJ Feild, Jack McMullen, Corrado Invernizzi, Gianfranco Tordi, Benjamin Rigby, Wallace Langham, Jonathan LaPaglia, Ward Horton. (PG-13, 152 mins) With a pace as relentless as the 24 Hours of Le Mans race that takes up most of its third act, FORD V FERRARI is a throwback to the kind of vintage, character-driven, star-powered crowd-pleasers that we don't see nearly enough of these days. It's probably the fastest two and a half hours of the year, and it's also nice to see it click with moviegoers in a year when films aimed at grownups haven't been doing well (a shame nobody went to see MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN). It's a quintessential dad movie that's both feel-good and a man-weepie. It's funny and filled with riveting action, dramatic tension, quotable dialogue, and terrific performances all around. At its heart, it's a classic buddy movie and one of the best films about racing ever made, but is engineered as such that you don't even need to be a racing fan or a huge car aficionado to get completely sucked into it. "They don't make 'em like this anymore" is a cliched turn of phrase, but it applies here. FORD V FERRARI is the kind of mainstream, multiplex popcorn movie that ends up winning a ton of awards simply because it gets just about everything right and is almost impossible to dislike.
Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) won the 24-hour endurance race Le Mans in 1959 but was soon forced to retire from the circuit after being diagnosed with a heart condition. By 1964, he's a successful businessman who runs Shelby American, which builds and modifies sports and racing cars for the circuit and for private buyers wealthy enough to afford them (Steve McQueen is mentioned as a regular client). At the same time in Detroit, Ford is struggling and CEO Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) demands solutions from his marketing team. His VP Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) suggests they abandon the '50s style vehicles and start focusing on flashier, sportier cars to appeal to Baby Boomers who are now driving age. Iacocca goes even further by suggesting they make the Ford name synonymous with cool (Iacocca: "James Bond doesn't drive a Ford." Ford II: "James Bond is a degenerate") by entering the racing world in a partnership with Italian auto magnate Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone), who rules Le Mans but is secretly facing bankruptcy. When Ferrari reveals himself to be playing them simply to drive up his asking price for preferred partner Fiat, and insults an enraged Ford II--aka "The Deuce"--and the entire Ford company, the blustering CEO orders Iacocca and senior executive VP Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) to find the best engineers and drivers in the US--with no expense spared--to design and built a Le Mans-ready machine and crush Ferrari into the ground.
Iacocca immediately meets with Shelby, knowing he's the best in the business, and the top driver Shelby has in mind is his British buddy Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Miles is the best at what he does, but he's hot-tempered and doesn't play well with others, and he rubs Beebe the wrong way by showing up at an event as Shelby's guest and wasting no time derisively dismissing the Mustang, Ford's newest product on the market. Fearful that Miles' abrasive personality makes him the wrong driver to represent Ford, Beebe forces Shelby to keep his friend behind the scenes to placate Ford. But when none of the Ford drivers finish the '64 Le Mans, Shelby convinces Ford to allow Miles behind the wheel going forward, much to the sneering disapproval of the scheming Beebe, who basically functions as the film's chief villain. It's hard to imagine turning the engineering of the perfect racing vehicle--in this case the Ford GT40--into compelling cinema, but that's exactly what FORD V FERRARI does, culminating in the 1966 Le Mans, where Ford's racing team, headed by Miles, gives Ferrari his first serious competition in years.
Titled LE MANS '66 in Europe and some other parts of the world (apparently American moviegoers have no idea what Le Mans is--they probably don't, even though we already had the Steve McQueen vanity project LE MANS way back in 1971), FORD V FERRARI began life nearly a decade ago as a Tom Cruise-Brad Pitt teaming set to be directed by Michael Mann. Cruise's OBLIVION director Joseph Kosinski was later attached, though nothing ever happened and the two stars moved on. The script by brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (EDGE OF TOMORROW, GET ON UP) was tweaked by Jason Keller (MACHINE GUN PREACHER, ESCAPE PLAN--the latter under the pseudonym "Arnell Jesko"), and directing duties landed with James Mangold, one of Hollywood's top journeymen (COP LAND, GIRL INTERRUPTED, 3:10 TO YUMA), coming off 2017's LOGAN, arguably the UNFORGIVEN of superhero movies. The end result is pure entertainment from start to finish, anchored by Damon, who sometimes appears to be channeling Tommy Lee Jones in his portrayal of a take-no-shit Shelby, and Bale, who's rarely been this loose and likable onscreen, even when Miles is being a surly, uncooperative pain in the ass (Bale gets to show Miles' soft side in his scenes with Caitriona Balfe as his supportive wife who never hesitates to let him have it when he's got it coming to him, and Noah Jupe as their son, who idolizes his dad). They get excellent support from Letts, Bernthal, Girone (who lets his scowl do most of his emoting), Ray McKinnon (bringing a Dennis Weaver-ish folksiness to Shelby's chief engineer Phil "Pops" Remington), and Lucas, who makes an utterly punchable Beebe, depicted throughout as a servile, boot-licking toady who's willing to throw anyone under the bus if it makes him look good in The Deuce's eyes. While there is no doubt some liberties taken in the service of telling the story, FORD V FERRARI is exhilarating filmmaking and an inspired addition to the pantheon of underdog sports cinema.
LIVE BY NIGHT (US - 2016) Written and directed by Ben Affleck. Cast: Ben Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone, Robert Glenister, Miguel J. Pimentel, Matthew Maher, Anthony Michael Hall, Clark Gregg, Max Casella, J.D. Evermore, Christian Clemenson, Benjamin Ciaramello, Derek Mears. (R, 130 mins) Ben Affleck made his directing debut with 2007's excellent Dennis Lehane adaptation GONE BABY GONE, and after establishing himself as a solid filmmaker with 2010's THE TOWN and 2012's Best Picture Oscar-winner ARGO, he returns with LIVE BY NIGHT, based on another Lehane novel. Where GONE BABY GONE and THE TOWN (based on a Chuck Hogan novel) were set in contemporary Boston, LIVE BY NIGHT looks at the city in a Prohibition-era setting. While Affleck the director captures the look of late 1920s Boston, his script is all over the place and he's completely miscast in the lead role. Affleck isn't an actor who thrives in period pieces and the film would've been better served had he stayed behind the camera as he did with GONE BABY GONE and cast someone else (co-producer Leonardo DiCaprio, perhaps?). With his Panama hat and oversized suit, he never looks comfortable in the role of Joe Coughlin, a WWI vet and Boston stick-up man-turned-Tampa rum runner. There's simply too much story for a feature film, and here is yet another example of an overstuffed film that would've been better served as a cable miniseries where characters could be fleshed out and events wouldn't be so glossed over. The pacing is choppy and there's reams of sleepy,, mumbly Affleck narration to cover exposition and whole sections of plot that are missing, not to mention Scott Eastwood and Titus Welliver having their entire roles cut out (Welliver is still in the credits, but if he's there, I didn't see him). Robert Richardson's cinematography and Jess Gonchor's production design are top-notch and every now and again, there's a striking image (like a car engulfed in flames sticking out of a shallow lake) or a memorable line of dialogue (the "So what am I talkin' to you for?" bit is great), but the cluttered and muddled LIVE BY NIGHT is otherwise is just too familiar to make its own mark in the gangster genre, borrowing too many ideas from too many movies that came before it to tell a story we've seen countless times before.
Affleck's Coughlin is a small-time Boston hood who happens to be the son of a high-ranking police superintendent (Brendan Gleeson). He's also in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), the moll of powerful Irish mob kingpin Albert White (Robert Glenister). Their plan to run away together is thwarted when she's intimidated into ratting him out to White, who beats him senseless and leaves him in a coma. After he wakes and serves a stint in prison, he's paroled only to find his father has died and Emma was killed by White. Hell-bent on revenge, Coughlin forms an unholy alliance with Italian crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) to take over the booze operation in the Tampa enclave of Ybor City and cut White out of the picture. Heading to Tampa with his buddy Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina), Coughlin teams with Cuban gangster Esteban Suarez (singer Miguel, under his full name Miguel J. Pimentel) and falls for his sister and partner Graciella (Zoe Saldana). Coughlin has to deal with all sorts of pressure, from stern police chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) cordially warning him to stay in his territory and they won't have any trouble, to the local chapter of the KKK, led by Figgis' idiot brother-in-law R.D. Pruitt (Matthew Maher), who wants a 60% cut of the business since Joe's club caters to Cubans and blacks and because he's hooked up with Graciella. LIVE BY NIGHT also finds time for a subplot about Figgis' wholesome daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) heading off to Hollywood to be a movie star but instead falling into drugs and prostitution. She then returns to Ybor City to become a fire-and-brimstone preacher warning the townsfolk about the dangers of gambling and "the demon rum," which stonewalls Pescatore's plans for Coughlin to build a casino.
There's also double-crosses against Coughlin by the increasingly greedy Pescatore, who wants his moron son Digger (Max Casella) to take over the Ybor City operation, a sudden reappearance by a character presumed dead for no discernible reason, and about four endings before the credits finally roll. People are introduced and things happen so quickly and at times randomly that it's sometimes difficult to process who's who and how they figure into the story. LIVE BY NIGHT is always nice to look at and Affleck has an undeniable flair with set pieces (including an intense early card game stick-up that he does in a single take), but it's lacking everywhere else. He tries to cover it up with all the narration, but the seams don't take long to show. Affleck's performance is curiously bland throughout, never seeming like a 1920s gangster but always like a modern actor playing gangster dress-up (and for a smart guy, Coughlin is pretty brazenly stupid about being seen in public with Emma). Graciella's character arc makes no sense, bemoaning her husband's (yeah, she and Coughlin get married offscreen and then it's casually mentioned several scenes later) dangerous career, seemingly forgetting that they met because she's a partner in a major Cuban crime organization. Gleeson and Miller have nothing to do, and Cooper's character never makes consistent sense from scene to scene. Veteran Italian character actor Girone (in his first American film in a career going back to 1974) and an outstanding Fanning fare best, even if her Loretta ends up being another underdeveloped plot tangent that briefly turns the film into an Eli Sunday sermon from THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Affleck tries to go for a MILLER'S CROSSING feel, but ends up with a rushed, lesser BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and his own lackluster performance never inspires you to care much about Coughlin. By the third or fourth ending, the relaxed pace starts to lend a second-tier Clint Eastwood feeling to the proceedings, further demonstrating the uneven tone of the entire project. LIVE BY NIGHT might've had potential, and perhaps a longer director's cut would help, but in the end, it's a formulaic, cliche-laden misfire from Affleck.
