If you love movies, I mean truly love the suckers, then you know never to miss a special delivery from filmmaker Michael Mann. Even at 80, he can still shame the young ones with his vroom and a classical style that shows how action, when done right, really does define character.
The Mann touch is all over “Ferrari,” now thrumming only in theaters, in which Mann directs a powerfully nuanced Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, the ex-racer-turned-entrepreneur who is now settled in his 50s and so broke that he must win 1957's biggest heat -- the Mille Miglia, the 1,000-mile race across Italy. “You get into one of my cars,” says Enzo,” you get in to win.”
Victory will save the company Ferrari and his wife Laura (a ball-of-fire Penelope Cruz) built from scratch. Out of that outline, Mann builds a character study of subtle force and feeling. It's the intimacy bubbling under the adrenaline rush that qualifies “Ferrari” as a genuine movie event.
MORE: Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz talk new film 'Ferrari' and their roles as the Italian couple
OK, maybe you swore you’d never pay up again to hear Driver mangle an Italian accent as he did opposite Lady Gaga in “House of Gucci.” But a laidback Driver plays it cool this time, even as Ferrari’s empire threatens to crumble. So strong is Ferrari’s internal engine that it’s no wonder he’s known as Commendatore to everyone in his orbit, including his wife and mistresses.
Mann, a past master of fictional crime stories (“Heat,” “Manhunter,” “Collateral,” “Thief,” “Miami Vice”), switches to real life here, as he did brilliantly in 1999’s “The Insider” with Russell Crowe as Big Tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand and 2006’s “Public Enemies” with Johnny Depp as notorious bank robber John Dillinger.
Driver’s Ferrari plays it close to the vest but his inner turmoil is always churning. How could it not with wife Laura aiming a gun at him and his mistress, Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), demanding that their son, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese), be given the Ferrari name. Laura insists the name belongs only to Dino, her son with Enzo who died of muscular dystrophy at 24.
The domestic drama sometimes slows the film’s pace. The Commandatore only comes alive while watching his blood-red cars, driven by the champion likes of Peter Collins (Jack O’Connell) and Piero Taruffi (a terrific Patrick Dempsey). And the rip-roaring racing scenes are thrilling to the max. Mann shines at revealing the behavior of complex men doing life-or-death jobs.
Tragedy crashes into Enzo’s life during the Mille Miglia when a tire blows out in a Ferrari car driven by Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone). In a sequence that will leave your heart in your mouth, the car hits a pole and flies into the crowd, killing nine spectators along with Portago.
MORE: Watch Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz in pulse-pounding trailer to Michael Mann's 'Ferrari'As a result, the Italian government outlawed racing on public roads and Ferrari was charged with manslaughter. Though he was later acquitted, Driver shows how the horrific accident forever haunted him. Yet he found his fire in racing till his death in 1988 at age 90.
Mann has a knack for the dynamics of human interaction caught in the clutches of blatant capitalism. Adapted by Troy Kennedy Martin from a book by Brock Yates, “Ferrari” can stall when stranding its protagonist on the sidelines. Only an early flashback shows Ferrari behind the wheel, caught up in his need for speed.
That’s why the film needed a creative team, including camera wiz Erik Messerschmidt and composer Daniel Pemberton, to fill in the emotions hidden in the space between words. Ferrari called racing “our deadly passion, our terrible joy.” And Mann and Driver get it all on screen. Just sit back and behold.
