Just like Enzo Ferrari, director Michael Mann is well-known as a perfectionist, relentless in his pursuit of and commitment to excellence. The 80-year-old can’t really be described as prolific, can you believe this is only his 12th feature film? I read Mann’s director’s statement to a film festival, stating how he practically walked in Enzo’s shoes, filmed in various places in Modena, Italy that are important to him (the barbershop in the film is the same one Enzo frequented), and explored all the mechanicals of the automobiles he designed.

When it comes to casting, however, he’s more concerned with casting the right actor for the job, regardless of ethnicity. I personally have no issue with that, so long as the actor can embody the role well. Given his last name, Adam Driver seems destined to be in a film involving driving, though unlike his role as a bus driver in Patterson, he actually doesn’t do much driving here. There’s only a brief flashback of Enzo Ferrari as a young man in his racing day shot hazily with kind of a motion blur effect to it. For the majority of the film, Driver portrays Ferrari as a man in his late 50s, struggling to keep his car business afloat while still mourning the death of his first son, Dino. The typically stoic Enzo lets his guard down when he visits Dino, whom he still seeks counsel from beyond the grave. It’s an interesting contrast to see Enzo burst into sobs at the mausoleum while his estranged wife Laura (Penélope Cruz) weeps in silence when she visits minutes later.

This inescapable grief casts a gloomy shadow over most of the film, the only time we saw Enzo and Laura’s smile was when their son was still with them. In the summer of 1957, there isn’t much to smile about for them as bankruptcy threatens the company they have built a decade prior. The problem is Enzo spends more than he makes, yet he seems strangely unperturbed by that fact, even proudly stating that he only sells cars to race. Meanwhile, Laura is visibly frustrated, not only by the business crisis but also by Enzo’s infidelity. Early in the film, she takes a gun and shoots at her husband, deliberately missing him but it’s enough to shock him. Laura comes across as a mad woman at first. But as the film progresses, one can’t help but sympathize with a powerful woman who’s not just Enzo’s wife but also his business partner. The movie paints Laura as Enzo’s equal as she controls half of the Ferrari business, so naturally, she doesn’t take it lightly when Enzo wants to buy her out.

A Vox article cites reasons why Ferrari is ‘an ode to dudes who love cars,’ evident from all the featurettes of Mann talking about painstakingly recreating period-specific Ferraris and how the sound of those cars sounds like music to his ears. As for the rest of us lay people who aren’t so enamored with Italian automobiles, the result is wildly uneven. Ferrari is actually billed as a slice-of-life biopic, centered on three pivotal months of his life, rather than an auto racing movie, yet Mann is clearly far more invested in the cars and racing part of Enzo’s life than his personal life. The level of energy shoots up in the electric racing scenes while it plods along when no cars are involved.

One of my main issues is with how Enzo is depicted in the script by Troy Kennedy Martin–detached, glacial, and impassive. Perhaps that’s how Enzo was in real life but it certainly isn’t an intriguing characterization on screen. Driver is typically a charismatic actor but here he’s in consistently pensive (or skulking) mode that robs him of his magnetism. The scenes between Enzo and his mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley) are so subdued they border on lethargic. It’s easy for Cruz to steal the scenes with her ‘hell hath no fury for a woman scorned’ fierceness. There’s a hint of a juicy love triangle but it quickly gets overshadowed by the racing scenes and the dramas amongst the drivers.

What Mann succeeds at is showing the addictive nature of race car driving, that unbridled allure of dangerous adrenaline and raging competitive vigor shared by all of Scuderia Ferrari drivers, the likes of Peter Collins (Jack O’Connell), Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey) and Spanish aristocrat Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone). Enzo’s passion for his cars is evident, it’s as if this man bleeds motor oil instead of blood, though I wish there were more scenes of Enzo working on the car designs. There’s a memorable moment of him explaining his blueprints to young Piero, his son with Lina, whom he hesitates to acknowledge publicly.

The racing scenes have a visceral feel that gives you a sense as if you were there, not just mere passive viewers. Few films are as technically proficient as this one, meticulously staged for authenticity. In just a little over two hours, the film practically builds towards the historic 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia. It’s Enzo’s last roll of the dice to save his company that ends in a horrific tragedy. The visuals by DP Erik Messerschmidt, combined with Daniel Pemberton’s dynamic score infuse a sense of dread amidst the excitement for the race, considered a cultural event for Italians and the motorsports community alike. The most violent scene happened in a crash that killed Portago and his co-driver Edmund Nelson, as their Ferrari flew into the crowd and mowed down everything and everyone in its path, killing a total of 11 people. It’s definitely not for the squeamish as Mann depicts the mutilated bodies and a body severed in half.

On the whole, I was more affected by the gruesome crash that ended the Mille Miglia than by the hero of the story. After such a shocking tragedy, the ending feels rather anti-climactic, and even at that point, I struggled to care for Enzo who remains an enigma. I understand this film has been a lifelong dream for Mann, who wanted to make this film since he was just 24. I’m glad he’s back in the director’s chair as he’s a venerable filmmaker who’s delivered some of my all-time favorite films–Heat, The Insider, Collateral. After the disappointing Blackhat in 2015, I was really hoping for a return to form after seeing the thrilling trailer. Alas, despite the thrilling race sequences, Ferrari lacks a certain oomph (or vroom in this case) to mark a memorable comeback. Still, I hope there’s still fuel in Mann’s tank to make more movies and that his best work is not behind him.

Have you seen FERRARI? What did you think?

”’