'Ferrari' briefing

2 ½ (out of 4)

            If Michael Mann ain’t makin’ ‘em for the boys I don’t know who is, but who cares about gender when he’s got the craft by the balls? He makes movies equal to more than the sum of their parts but Ferrari is so whelming in sum it would probably have played better on Showtime where the 95 million dollar enterprise once was destined for. Ferrari functions as his fourth biopic for boomers, after his great whistleblower ode The Insider, the champion of the world against his culture’s grain for 2001’s Ali, as well as Public Enemies, one of his most commercial features and probably the strangest slice of his digital age given the period setting. Cassius Clay or Dillinger aside, Enzo Ferrari’s life is about as entertaining as watching tobacco industry snitches discloses corporate secrets, however if you’re as blind as I was to this tragic story’s full sum, you could be callously calling this boring. A lot of Ferrari’s character boils down to chilly, unfeeling determination — early on he watches a driver in one of his malfunctioning cars go FLYING to no reaction; yeah, well, shit happens — and the screenplay is content to unfold his double life for all the telenovela qualities are worth.

Adam Driver is seemingly warming up his accent before grasping it — just in the way a race car’s speed isn’t judged by the first lap but rather when it’s already in motion, Driver’s worst moments were likely shot at the beginning of production, and shooting out of sequence means feeling as if they’re slipping between dialectic amateurism and second nature. Speaking of, WAS Shailene Woodley supposed to be Italian? Because fuck if I could tell! I think she’s great but her voice is distinctly American, Driver’s too, like Will Smith as Muhammad Ali, in cadence or coaching or whatever, it’s just back and forth between real and “real”. Similarly to Driver’s experience, Tom Cruise was well-cast against type for cold-blooded villainy in Mann’s mighty good Collateral, but both of the roughly 40-year-old performers have far too much grey in their hair especially for how little you fill in the wrinkles, I don’t understand! Unlike Smith in Ali (whose casting alone always made me go “nah,” but he and the film are more convincing and mythically impressive than you expect) the average Joseph doesn’t really know what Enzo looked like without Wikipedia. So Driver, one of his generation’s finest, even with the advantage of the performative upper hand still can’t overcome how bitchy it is to play a character twenty years your senior, particularly when the makeup department seems more preoccupied with the stupid wig. Viewers are apparently saving all the praise here for Penélope Cruz, but she perhaps involuntarily turns this movie into Oscar bait given that her role is written through the lens of melodramatic hysterics from the word go.

For as much as Mann is a ferociously talented filmmaker, possessing Oliver Stone’s temperament (just less fiery cinematography, fidgety editing and overt political outrage) and a knack for crime thrillers of all shades like some Marty Scorsese secondary (Mann does often go toe to toe with the Italian stallion), frankly I couldn’t spot big Mike’s imprint here — forget about evening shots drowned in blue, forget about long lens and shallow focus shots too. Sure the racing scenes are bristling with economy and intensity, but they’re nothing next to the aesthetic dressing of even his worst stuff — at least his last, 2015’s Blackhat, the already outdated digital cat and mouse NCIS episode, had nice Atticus Ross (sans Reznor) bleeps slathered across. The new Mann says to hell with distinct, otherworldly, ethereal ambiance and scoring too, ain’t nothing close to Tangerine dreaminess here. And not to bury the lead, but Mann is probably the most respected man of the digital era next to David Fincher, (whose movies often play like film without the grain, with a perfected prototypical layer of that Netflix grease) and listen I hardly know a Viper from an ArriAlexa any more than the next film enthusiast/bashful film-tech novice, seriously. Considering I didn’t know if this was shot on film or digital — DIGITAL of course, the Sony Venice 2 Camera — it’s funny that it didn’t matter seeing as the “film look,” in tone and texture, leaves the distinct digital era of Mann’s work far behind regardless, so much so he kind of lost his identity.

It’s just ironic how traditionally sharp and impressive the visual result really is since there wasn’t too much to show off. But if his style has been somewhat shaken, it’s fine so long as the script doesn’t feel like typical biopic bullshit, and to my delight this is insistently anti-hagiography filmmaking. But that ruthless framing suggests this may as well be a CNN Special report or an engaging documentary, even more than The Insider. Even at his most adept his works were never terribly crowd-pleasing, this one especially so, nonetheless this movie is quite the masochists Christmas Day at the movies… I can’t remember vocalizing “Holy shit!” in a theater maybe ever, but this movie’s “climax” is memorably gruesome. Enjoy watching about a dozen people die horribly as you go on home to your goose and galoshes?

Mann has been a pioneer, a singular voice, but I think outside of his debut Thief, which illustrated his whole essence and carved out his cool corner for classic, calculated crime flicks, and his major triple plays (Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, then Collateral, Miami Vice and just barely Public Enemies plus the aforementioned Insider and Ali in between) this marks only the third time he's felt outta sorts. After a power gap somewhere is Ferrari and its pitch dark, funereal take on the apparatus of the biographical features. This respectable enough movie could’ve been directed by anybody, and without the distinct soundcraft and flush camerawork reminding one of movies as gorgeous to the eyes and ears as his most astonishing accomplishments, this becomes a quiet then completely distressing conundrum in Mann’s oeuvre, next to the The Keep and his unsuitable sophomore synthesis of Nazis and supernatural horror, or Blackhat proving old people should just stay away from “techno thrillers” (thanks Spielberg). Ferrari is debatably his worst in 40 years, and still remains hardly a fresh low point to be derided for, it's just a rare, borderline inessential notch in an outstanding filmography, though it’s easy to see why Mann has a fascination with this world — for auto nerds I’m sure this is orgasmic in glimmers.