Le Mans ​’66 – first look review

Some­times you don’t know you need­ed to see some­thing until it’s placed right in front of your eyes. Case in point: Matt Damon and Chris­t­ian Bale tus­sling like small chil­dren on a man­i­cured lawn while Catri­ona Balfe looks on in qui­et amuse­ment. James Mangold’s Ford v Fer­rari (or Le Mans ​’66 for UK cin­e­ma-goers) under­stands the absurd, testos­terone-fuelled world in which it takes place. Yet rather than opt­ing for total, po-faced sto­icism, Mangold’s way into this world is through a fas­ci­nat­ing, com­pli­cat­ed, often test­ed friend­ship. The film bears the name of two car man­u­fac­tur­ing giants, yet it’s real­ly about a dif­fer­ent pair of auto­mo­tive leg­ends: Car­ol Shel­by and Ken Miles.

Togeth­er the pair were charged with devel­op­ing a rac­ing car that could beat Enzo Ferrari’s team at the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1966, at the request of Hen­ry Ford II, who had set his sights on the title in a bid to chal­lenge con­ser­v­a­tive per­cep­tions about his family’s firm. Some­how, Man­gold has made a two and half hour movie out of this rather dry-sound­ing source mate­r­i­al, and most pleas­ing­ly, it’s enter­tain­ing even to some­one with absolute­ly no skin in the rac­ing game.

The film’s suc­cess is the result of the way it grounds the sto­ry in the rela­tion­ship between Shel­by (Matt Damon) and Miles (Chris­t­ian Bale). The leads dis­play such an easy rap­port with each oth­er that they real­ly sell this tumul­tuous part­ner­ship, cre­at­ing a sense that, despite their dif­fer­ences, Shel­by and Miles were brought togeth­er by a shared under­stand­ing of what dri­ves them – quite literally. 

It’s not as if either role is a par­tic­u­lar stretch for these actors, but they’re enter­tain­ing enough to observe. Also delight­ful is Tra­cy Letts as Ford II, a grum­bling bull­dog of a man who has an incred­i­ble scene with Bale when Miles takes Ford for a spin in their new race car. As you may expect from such an aggres­sive­ly Amer­i­can movie, the Ital­ians fair less well, reduced to a pet­ty, preen­ing bunch of over­con­fi­dent car­toon villains.

The race scenes are well-chore­o­graphed and staged — even know­ing the out­come to start with, the jour­ney is the des­ti­na­tion, as they say. There’s some slight­ly twee voice-over work from Damon than book­ends the film and strays toward the petrol head machis­mo of the Fast & Furi­ous fran­chise, but for the most part, Man­gold avoids the temp­ta­tion to go too heavy on the schmaltz. It also gives you a new appre­ci­a­tion for the com­plex­i­ty of auto­mo­bile engi­neer­ing, and the fear­less­ness of those who get behind the wheel of the fastest cars on the planet. 

Wise­ly Man­gold avoids paint­ing the only female char­ac­ter in the film – Ken’s wife Mol­ly, played by Catri­ona Balfe – as a hand-wring­ing shrew. Quite the oppo­site: she’s sup­port­ive, under the pro­vi­so that Ken is com­plete­ly hon­est with her about his ambi­tions. A film about the car indus­try in the ​’60s was nev­er going to be a fem­i­nist jam­boree, so it’s at least good to see Balfe and Bale as part­ners rather than an absent hus­band and a pin­ing wife.

It’s a hand­some, enter­tain­ing yarn – per­haps not one for the his­to­ry books, but cer­tain­ly enjoy­able. You might call it Peak Dad Cin­e­ma – it’s as reas­sur­ing­ly mid­dle-brow as a Sun­day roast and Inspec­tor Morse on the tel­ly after­wards. Yet Man­gold does his best to inject ener­gy and humour into a sto­ry that might oth­er­wise only appeal to car freaks.

Inter­est­ing­ly, anoth­er bat­tle between titans played out in the devel­op­ment of Ford Vs Fer­rari, between James Man­gold and Michael Mann, who has been try­ing to make an Enzo Fer­rari biopic for years, and ini­tial­ly Bale was set to play the lead (Hugh Jack­man is now slat­ed, but there’s still no sign of the film). Man­gold might have crossed the fin­ish line first, but time will tell if he or Mann has pro­duced the bet­ter film.