Watched one of the most celebrated(?) films of 2019, Ford V Ferrari.
For a film that is supposedly about Ford and Ferrari, there is surprisingly little of either. I guess the script must’ve been titled The Carroll Shelby & Ken Miles Show until somebody lifted their hand and pointed out the average moviegoer doesn’t have a clue who Carroll Shelby is, let alone Ken Miles.
Mind, while anybody with a passing interest in cars has heard the name Shelby at least once, it’s not like I am a walking encyclopedia, or knew already everything that there was to know about the GT40. Quite the opposite.
But anybody can get a rough idea just by spending much less time reading about the subject, than it takes to watch the film.
My main issue with this picture is similar to that I have with The Imitation Game: both films are entertaining, if watched in a vacuum, but also are way south of the border, when it comes to factual accuracy.
Now, Hollywood certainly doesn’t have an unshakable reputation for adhering to facts, and surely one cannot expect a script writer not to take liberties – it’s a film telling a long story in a limited time, so it can never be 100% accurate.
Literally every story I’ve read about the Drake suggests he was given a better portrayal in the picture than he actually deserved, even though the casting choice is perplexing, to say the least. However, the Ford side of things seemed wildly out of whack.
It’s rarely a serious film, something that perhaps can be explained by a desire to depict that era of racing as daredevil, and also to provide a counter-balance to some really tragic facts, but the end result didn’t make entirely sense. It hits a weirdly farcical note.
Christian Bale has been given a colorful role here, and he’s fun to watch for most of his screen time, although he came across as a bit labored and not fully convincing to me; probably the script is at least partly to blame for this, too.