Film Review - Ford v Ferrari (12A)

Look out there. Out there is the perfect lap. 

Certain films transcend their subject-matter - prison life or the fashion industry or boxing - to embrace an audience far wider than the demographic you might expect. Ford v Ferrari (marketed here in the UK and elsewhere as Le Mans '66) is a prime example. I'm no gearhead, a fact to which my battered old VW Golf will testify, but from the first engine rev James Mangold's new movie had my attention and it only kept increasing its hold.

In the early 1960s the Ford Motor Company decided to take on Enzo Ferrari's genius at crafting racing cars by creating one of their own - a win at France's Le Mans 24-hour car race becoming the acid test of their achievement. To that end they hired ex-racer turned automobile designer Carroll Shelby (played in the film by Matt Damon) to come up with their dream car. But Shelby had the wisdom to know he'd need to partner with an active racing driver for the project to succeed. The man he selected was brilliant but volatile English racer Ken Miles (Christian Bale given the behind-the-wheel honours).Their friendship had the combustive spark required to ignite the project, but their problems weren't limited to how far you can push a sports car. Ford's management had their own ideas on the venture and these odd-couple heroes  - so the film tells us - were soon struggling with more than carburettors and brake failure to achieve their near-impossible goal. They had The Man to contend with too.

 

Ford v Ferrari possesses the old-fashioned quality of human drama wrapped up in a sports picture. This story's pace is as stately as the cars are fast. It hangs out with its leads and lets us get to know them, it follows the machinations of the Ford executives as they angle to get the better of their Italian rival, it sets everything up painstakingly so that once the racing kicks in - and damn does it kick in - we really care about the guys in the car and the pit. By then we know the human stakes as well as the business ones and we're securely on board for the ride.

Steering us around a literate screenplay (UK's Butterworth brothers John and playwright Jez both have a hand in it) is Mangold. With Walk the Line and Logan under his belt he's simply one of the most accomplished journeyman directors working today; despite this movie's length it demonstrates streamlined film-craft in keeping with its RPM subject-matter. The cinematography makes the cars gleam with primary colour brilliance and scenes like the one where Ken Miles sits and chats with his son on the floodlit Daytona Speedway tarmac are just plain beautiful. But it's in the race sequences that the directorial brilliance really shows through. Track-level and car-interior shots tell the story of each contest superbly and to white-knuckel effect. You can know diddly-squat - like me - about the sport, yet you're still there with Miles, clinging to each bend and barrelling down every straight, willing him with Shelby to 'wait for it... wait for it...' until that optimum moment to accelerate.

It helps that Damon and Bale provide such a compelling central relationship. Shelby is the slick salesman, fending off the pressure of Ford to sideline his partner, while Miles is the edgy, spanner-flinging race-guru - infuriating but instantly likeable nonetheless, not least because he's frequently hilarious. And if Bale's Midlands accent sometimes takes detours around the far-flung byways of England, the sheer passion and depth he brings to the role render that quibble entirely moot. The men's friendship is combative but heartfelt, providing ample emotional context for the speed.

Meanwhile the film makes room for Miles' family life - Catriona Balfe and Noah Jupe supply touching moments as his no-nonsense wife and adoring son respectively. We feel the dynamics of the car-building team as they wrestle with the logistics of what they're creating. And the internal company politics adds a whole other intriguing layer; Jon Bernthal and Josh Lucas are competing voices in the boss's ear, while Tracy Letts makes for an imposing if insecure Henry Ford II. It all pushes the runtime, but thinking about it after, there's not a single element I'd discard.

Ford v Ferrari is much more than you expect going in. For all its focus on shared aspiration towards an unfeasible-seeming dream, it's also about the tension between creatives and management (and thus an allegory for every Hollywood movie ever made), and about the drivenness that threatens to end certain lives before they've been fully lived. But above all, it's a tale of friendship forged through common purpose, a theme that the movie's finale underscores. Racing car fans will have a great time here - but anyone who loves well-made film drama with an old-school twist will have their own engine turning over in delighted response.

Gut Reaction: It made me laugh, it accelerated all my vital signs, it glued my palm to my jaw at points through sheer high-speed tension. The epic '60s soundtrack wowed me too.

Memorable Moment: Carroll Shelby's unforgettable high-risk stategy.

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. It goes against the times in more ways than one, but this is a technical stunner of a film and massively enjoyable to boot. Basically - vrooooom.    

Film Review - Creed II (12A)

He broke things in me that ain't never been fixed.

I was there when it all went down first time around. When Apollo Creed was knocked to the canvas by Ivan Drago, never to rise again. When Rocky Balboa  - the 'Italian Stallion' -  returned to the ring to avenge his friend before a partisan Moscow crowd. When he damn well won the Cold War for the USA, in spirit at least. I witnessed every drop of sweat and blood those mad Titans spilt - from my seat in the Iveagh Cinema, Banbridge, circa 1985. It was wildly over-the-top for sure, a long way from the urban grit of the original Rocky, but damn was it thrilling too.

Now thirty-three years later Soviet colossus Drago (Dolph Lundgren) is back for vengeance-by-proxy. In Creed II Apollo's son Adonis 'Donnie' Creed (Michael B. Jordan) is punching his full heavyweight in the boxing world - mentored by Rocky himself (Sylvester Stallone back in the role that defined him) and hoping to settle with his singer-girlfriend (Thor Ragnarok's now thoroughly famous Tessa Thompson). But then the Russian nemesis of the father he never knew throws down a terrifying challenge. Drago has a son of his own, named Viktor, who looks like he's been created in an iron foundry, and who has been trained with the express purpose of defeating Creed junior. Don't do it, the older/wiser Rocky advises, but Donnie has blood in his eye and sets out to avenge his late dad. 

2015's Creed proved a wonderful surprise. Here was a film that reinvigorated the Rocky franchise while tapping into what made us love it in the first place - namely heart and soul. The biggest compliment I can give Creed II is that it doesn't let its predecessor down (hooray!), acting rather as an enthralling companion piece. It teases out character threads from the first and deepens established relationships, while introducing fascinating new ones. 

Director Steven Caple Jr. does a creditable job in his first major studio gig, retaining the grainy blue-collar sensibility of the Ryan Coogler original and supplying the fight sequences with sufficiently bruising authenticity. (If he doesn't yet have Coogler's stature, he's on the way to achieving those heights.) Co-written by Stallone the movie delves into familial bonds and pressures like never before, while supplying each of its central characters with depth and believability. Yes there's lots of intergenerational dude-stuff going on, but it's leavened by a beautifully developed relationship between Donnie and Bianca, detailing their joys and travails as a couple and taking them in some unexpected directions. 

Jordan, the other side of his Black Panther triumph, lives the title role, bringing both charisma and vulnerability along with the brawn. Stallone meanwhile is predictably great as Rocky, the old warhorse turned trainer and surrogate dad. But oddly enough it's another father-son combo that stole the film for me - that of team Drago. Three decades have transformed Ivan from the cartoon-style machine he was in Rocky IV into something very different and way more interesting; rather than simply a pair of brutal antagonists, he and his boy Viktor have understandable motivations for their actions. The result is a climactic fight sequence where you feel properly invested in both contestants. Now that's some good screen-writing.

It's one of Creed II's main strengths - the amount of character detail introduced in between all the power-punching, so that those punches carry emotional weight. Another is the fact that while the film followed a seasoned Rocky formula, it finds clever ways of subverting expectation - never anything major, but enough to provide an element of pleasant surprise. Caple Jr, Stallone and co provide just enough variation on a much-loved theme to let you thoroughly enjoy it all again. And when a certain familiar musical theme kicks in towards the end, you'll feel that Donnie Creed has more than earned it. The Balboa mantle has truly been passed on.

Gut Reaction: A lot of wincing, as particularly brutal hooks and upper-cuts were landed. But this movie punched me right in the feels as well.

Where Are the Women?: Thompson is terrific and given proper space to develop as Bianca. And Phylicia Rashad is wonderfully knowing as Donnie's seen-it-all mom.

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. This could have made original Creed less than it was. Instead it enhances everything, while taking storylines from the daft Rocky IV and giving them some gravitas. Result - another knockout. 

Film Review - Battle of the Sexes (12A)

Times change. You know that. You've just changed them.

I was not quite six when the so-called 'Battle of the Sexes' took place. That's the tennis match between ex-World Number One Bobby Riggs and rising star Billie Jean King, which acted as a bizarre test-case for how female athletes should be regarded and paid. This carnival show-tournament, initiated by Riggs, cut to the heart of US gender politics - the wider 'battle' between 1970s women's libbers and chauvinistic male attitudes. Already the subject of a 2015 documentary, the King-Riggs showdown has now been dramatised, with Emma Stone and Steve Carell squaring up to each other on court and off.

Stone and Carell are a proven pairing, having shared screen time in Stupid Crazy Love, and here they both shine. The La La Land Oscar winner plays Billie Jean at a point when she's leading America's female tennis players in revolt against the US Lawn Tennis Association over a vast gender pay-gap. She's also wrestling with her own sexuality and the potential unravelling of her marriage. All in all a stressful time.

Carell's ex-champ Riggs has issues of his own. A gambling addict whose habit is effectively funded by his wife, he offers $100,000 prize money to any female tennis player who will take him on, branding himself a 'male chauvinist pig' who can beat any of them. It's a lure that King cannot resist.

Sticking closely to these remarkable real-life events, Battle of the Sexes has a grainy documentary feel at times. Even its tennis sequences are shot like '70s sports footage. The directorial team who brought us Little Miss Sunshine (and God bless them for doing so), linger on the character moments with the deliberately easy pace of a movie from that era. Meanwhile the screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire) refuses to paint characters simply, aside perhaps from Bill Pullman's commentator and boys-club reactionary Jack Kramer.

The result is an absorbing drama, where we spend equal time with equally appealing leads. Stone is authentic as ever - vulnerable but determined, with a canny sense of humour when dealing with the patronising media. Carell meanwhile makes Riggs hilarious - a consummate hustler and showman, whose sexist credentials ('I'm going to put the 'show' back in chauvinism') are maybe more comedic bluster than heartfelt ideology. The bantering between him and King for the cameras is pure pantomime, in keeping with the 'Battle of the Sexes' circus.

The match itself, though, is in dead earnest.

This film never loses its sense of the stakes - for King, for women's sports or for equality in general. Stone plays the weight of expectation perfectly, while we're constantly reminded of all those old-boys willing her to fail. Her burgeoning relationship with a young hairdresser (Andrea Riseborough, commendably unrecognisable from The Death of Stalin) only increases the pressure, however tenderly those moments are portrayed. 

Battle of the Sexes captures a significant moment in gender politics with humour and power. As with the best retelling of true stories, it invests set-in-stone events with genuine tension. You'll be entertained by Bobby's ludicrous antics, but it's Billie Jean you'll be rooting for.

Gut Reaction: Engrossed throughout. Carell made me laugh, Stone moved me. And the final confrontation really gripped.

Ed's Verdict: A solidly-made, splendidly-acted reminder - those male dinosaurs may still be clinging on, but forty-four years ago they'd already met their match. It's time we all accepted the fact.