James Mangold is back; Le Mans ’66 is a solidly entertaining retelling of the Ford v Ferrari face off.
Rating: 3/5
Over the past fifteen years, American director James Mangold has forged a filmography more diverse than most. The stark range goes all the way from a top-tier music biopic with 2005’s Walk the Line to the bleak and brutal superhero final chapter of 2017’s Logan, his most acclaimed feature to date.
It’s unsurprising, therefore, that Mangold has once again headed to new pastures for its follow up. Titled Le Mans ’66 in the UK, his latest is a flashy and solidly entertaining retelling of the Ford v Ferrari face off seen at 1966’s 24-hour race in France.
The dependable duo
Matt Damon and Christian Bale conjure a gasoline-fuelled bromance to provide the film’s core amid the period, midwestern America milieu. So much so, it’s fair to say that for Republican petrolhead boomers, this is the peak of cinema. Sticking to its skeletal true-story roots, Damon plays ex-Le Mans champion Carroll Shelby, the only American to have crossed the finish line first and a man now trying to enjoy race retirement by making and selling cars, despite his dicky heart.
Bale, meanwhile, is race driver Ken Miles from Birmingham. His eccentricity and filterless retorts soon land him the label of “unreliable” from the suits at the Ford Motor Company. As sales begin to flounder, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) and company vice president Lee Iacocca (John Bernthal) see a new marketing opportunity in developing a car and team for the famed Le Mans race, yet Italian champions Ferrari stand in the way of success.
As per, Damon brings his solid Hollywood charisma, playing Shelby as the man burdened with mediating between Miles and the bigwigs at Ford. It’s a performance that doesn’t exactly push the envelope for the actor, but serves to underline his consistency and likability. Bale, meanwhile, hasn’t had as much fun in years. The Welshman basks in letting his Brummie accent chew his dialogue, and the while the results are at times a little cartoonish (with the cadence going walkabout north of Birmingham), it’s mostly a pleasure to see him roister in such a way.
The plot
The movie is primarily, of course, about racing. Luckily this is where Mangold comes into his own. The film starts with Damon’s Shelby crying as he crosses the line at Le Mans, one of many sequences where Mangold’s showy style of revving engines, quick gear-change cuts and drivers sharing looks through their passenger windows across the track gives audiences just the kind of horsepower they crave in a racing film. But this pulpy crowd-pleasing is not without moments of greater depth.
A memorable scene sees Shelby go out on a limb while taking Mr Ford out for a spin in the new race car, only for the manufacturing mogul to burst into tears when the brakes hit. It’s a moment of clear comedy yet also surprising poignance as the tears flow amid the petrol-fuelled, pedal-to-the-metal masculinity.
This slightly comedic tone compliments the vivid blue and red automobile paint jobs seen in sunsets inflected with punchy 60s American optimism, punctuating scenes that could otherwise be tedious. But that’s not to say that the film isn’t untidy in some areas. The script wobbles into familiar pitfalls of American mawkishness, as seen when Ford tells Shelby before Le Mans: “We’ve already gone to war once in Europe, it’s time to do it again.” This is perhaps surprising given the pedigree of the English scriptwriters Jez Butterworth (the acclaimed playwright) and brother John-Henry, with American Jason Keller.
The Italian Ferrari team are regrettably stereotypical, constantly flailing their arms in a hysterical way that is perhaps reductive given what they had achieved at Le Mans up until the point the film relates. Similarly, Josh Lucas’ villainous Leo Beebe, senior executive vice president of Ford, is a sleazy, two-dimensional cardboard cut-out lacking development.
Final thoughts
Despite a very meaty runtime of 152 minutes, away from racing there is little else to get one’s teeth into. Shelby’s personal life is seemingly non-existent, with his unexplored heart condition confined to occasional pill-popping. On the other hand, Miles’ family of wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe) do feature frequently, yet are mostly reduced to plot-padding roles. But when the engines are finally turned off, few can overlook the solid entertainment of Le Mans ’66 as a whole. A memorable scene sees Shelby and Miles attend the unveiling of the Ford Mustang, a moment neatly emblematic of Mangold’s movie: A robust, popular and stylishly brash creation with typical American muscle.