An empire is in shambles under the Italian sun during the summer of 1957.  Racer-turned-engineer, Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), is struggling to keep the luxury brand solvent, and in an effort to redefine the company’s image, pushes his team to develop a fleet capable of winning the Mille Miglia.  After long days at the shop, he retreats to the comfort of Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), his mistress, and their illegitimate child, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese).  Back at the Ferrari estate, alone and suspicious, Laura (Penélope Cruz), Enzo’s wife, leverages her influence over the company to protect her own interest and reputation leaving Enzo to answer to his three masters; Laura, Lina, and Ferrari.  

Michael Mann returns to the director’s chair with Ferrari, a probing biopic written by Troy Kennedy Martin.  After a long production period, the 130-minute film opened at the Venice Film Festival before embarking on a theatrical rollout courtesy of Neon across the holiday frame.  Even before its muted reception at the festival, the industry was abuzz with chatter about Driver following up his role as Maurizio Gucci in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci (2021) with another prominent Italian businessman which cast a shade of doubt over the film in addition to this being Mann’s first feature in eight years. 

The film is handsomely shot by Erik Messerschmidt; classically minded in that it is without the modern sheen that many prestige pictures of today’s class have.  Pietro Scalia’s editing is also propulsive which helps to keep an energy moving throughout the scenes, but despite these elements, the film cannot shake the traipsing through molasses pacing of the script.  The story focuses on the fateful summer for Ferrari, but the sense of time is almost undiscernible in the moment.  It has a decent balance between the various plot lines, and even though the individual actions of the scenes move quickly, the whole picture feels quite tedious. 

Thankfully, the film is supported by strong performances, even though the casting choices are a bit beguiling.  Driver delivers a to-be-expected thoughtful performance and fosters chemistry between his scene partners which helps right the ship even though everyone he interacts with seems to be in an entirely different tonal zone.  Similarly, Cruz is delivering an incredibly interesting performance as a woman consumed by grief after the death of her son, Dino, and haunted by the open secret that Enzo has fathered an illegitimate son while she was kept away, wallowing in the passing of their own child.  Though Laura is often framed, lit, and blocked like a witch, the film never condescends her for her vengeful rage.  Introduced to audiences by firing a gun towards Enzo, she somehow becomes even more dangerous across the runtime, and one of the most thrilling sequences of the film comes around the halfway point when she visits unannounced at the Villa which Enzo had purchased for Lina.  She walks around the grounds, looking at a life her husband had been living in secret, and she takes with her one of Piero’s toy cars left in the garden.  The film does not specify if this toy was originally Dino’s, it may have been, but either way, when we see it later displayed on a shelf in her bedroom, there is a wave of dread and sorrow that washes over us and we sympathize with Laura’s frustrated anger towards Enzo who makes no indication that he sees the car. 

When it comes to Enzo’s secret life, the casting really begins to show some cracks with Woodley’s Lina.  It is not that she is doing anything particularly bad, but it is bland.  Some of this is due to the way she is written; Martin makes her a very mild character especially when compared to everyone else in the film so she really struggles to make her mark on the film and wrestle eyes away from Driver.  Her involvement in the film though is vital because she represents a bit of stability for Enzo, something he is lacking in every other aspect of his life.  When viewed this way, her inclusion and importance to the narrative makes sense, but the role does Woodley – and, not to be mistaken, any actress who would have filled this role – no favors. 

With a single word title, Ferrari, it conjures up the immediate image of a sleek car emblazoned with the black horse against a yellow shield.  Racing does not take the back seat in the film, but Mann, for much of the runtime, is more interested in the fraught interpersonal relationships which Enzo held.  There are moments in the first half where the cars take precedence – Enzo explaining the engine to Piero, or his demands of perfection from his drivers – but it plays out much more like a drama that when Mann finally does cut loose during the Mille Milga, Ferrari takes on a whole new energy. 

Concurrent with Lina and Laura, Enzo was courting yet another person in the leadup to the race, Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), a young, popular racer who was selected to drive the Ferrari 335 S in the Mille Miglia.  With a little more to do, Leone is able to make his mark on the film as he flaunts his ego across the frame, but like Lina, the script does not give him much to do outside of that.  He is a driver, but we get no sense of who he is outside of that seat and that lack of characterization of two major players in the film really makes Ferrari a challenging experience.  Thankfully, though, as a driver, Leone delivers as the camera captures his determination going around turns and bends, overtaking the Maserati team while Enzo admonishes the young racer in his mind, reminding him that when he is behind the wheel of a Ferrari, there is no brake pedal.  Mann’s choice of angles and preference for closeup is a little confusing and at times hard to follow, but Scalia is able to assemble the race scenes in such a way that we can quickly get ourselves back on track.  And then, against the form by which he has defined this film, Mann goes wide. 

With a large but not unchallenged lead, Alfonso declines a tire swap at a pitstop before setting out on one of the last legs of the 1000-mile race.  As he approached the village of Guidizzolo, he gained speed on the straightway, but a tire burst on impact with an object in the road, flipping the car off the course and into the crowd of spectators.  For those familiar with the story, there may be little surprise as this is everything that the film had been working towards, but even still, Mann had been saving his energy and his tricks for this moment.  It is a brutal scene, but not gratuitous, instead, it plays out with a grave matter-of-fact-ness that serves to further chill audiences.  It is shocking but not sensationalizing – the actual crash responsible for the death of nine civilians in addition to Alfonso and his navigator – and the investigation of the crash allows us a harrowing glimpse at one of the darkest elements of the high-octane sport. 

Ferrari is a complicated film both in its subject matter and its construction.  It is very well assembled, but the individual elements are all working on various tiers which unfortunately pulls the entire experience down.  To be admittedly reductive, it sits in the middle of the pack amongst its colleagues as a film about a great man and the woman who drove his success, but that is not entirely fair to this stranger-than-fiction story.  Mann is committed to focusing on a very brief moment in Enzo’s life, but he is trying to graft onto those few months an entire lifetime.  Because of that, it takes a very long time for the film to really come into focus, and once it does, many of the elements that were simmering away in the first half feel rushed to their finish.  Ferrari, though, is still a bold swing from a lauded class of filmmakers and there is absolutely something to be said about that.  There is a legitimate stately quality to the filmmaking that audiences can immediately recognize and appreciate as it is one of the dwindling few times we may have left to see such prestige of this timbre fill the silver screen as the industry is handed off to a new generation of auteurs.