Ferrari review: Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz supercharge story

Director Michael Mann is firing on all cylinders with this gripping biopic of Italian sports-car mogul Enzo Ferrari — and he's a perfect fit for his subject. Not only does he share with Ferrari a reputation for producing sleek, precision-tooled vehicles, he too has spent a long career exhibiting a reverence for nuts-and-bolts professionalism, a relish for adrenalized thrills and a well-disguised streak of romanticism.

Making his first film since 2015's cyber-thriller Blackhat, Mann does not follow Enzo Ferrari from cradle to grave but focuses instead on a crucial three months in his life from the summer of 1957. Enzo, played with cool determination and silver-fox suavity by a grey-haired Adam Driver, is at this time facing a series of entwined crises in his professional and personal lives. His sports-car company, launched a decade earlier and based in his hometown of Modena, currently produces fewer than 100 cars a year and faces imminent bankruptcy, while on the race track, local rival Maserati appears to be overtaking him.

If anything, his relationship with his wife, Laura — played by a fiery but de-glamourised Penélope Cruz — is in an even worse state. The couple, still reeling from the death the year before of their only child, 24-year-old son Dino, presently exist in a state of prickly semi-estrangement. In one early domestic scene, Laura, roiling with fury over Enzo’s reputation for womanizing, goes so far as to shoot a gun into the wall, just past her husband’s head. And she does not yet know of the existence of Enzo’s long-term mistress, Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), or of their 12-year-old son, Piero, whom Lina is urging Enzo to legally recognize.

To save his company, Enzo needs to produce and sell more cars but can only do so if he secures outside investment from the likes of Fiat or Ford. And he will only be able to finesse the deal, he believes, if he can both persuade Laura to give him control of the half of the company she owns — and if he can pull off a triumph for Ferrari at the forthcoming Mille Miglia, the celebrated but extremely perilous 1,000-mile open-road race across the Italian peninsula.

Three decades in the making, Ferrari is clearly a passion project for Mann. The screenplay, based on the 1991 biography "Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine" by Brock Yates, was originally written in the early 1990s by British TV and film legend Troy Kennedy Martin, creator of landmark TV series Z-Cars and screenwriter of 1969’s The Italian Job. In the years it took for the film to reach the starting line, a number of different actors were attached to the project, with first Christian Bale and then Hugh Jackman set at various stages to play Enzo Ferrari. 

Driver, not yet 40 at the time of filming, isn’t an obvious choice for the role of the 59-year-old Enzo, but the casting works. Physically commanding and effortlessly stylish, he looks the part. You do, admittedly, have to get your ears around the sound of non-Italian actors speaking with Italian accents, but his emotionally charged scenes opposite Cruz pull you into the moment — and banish memories of those dodgy Eye-talian inflections in House of Gucci. That said, the miscast Woodley is less comfortable in the role of tenacious mistress Lina, which somewhat unbalances the film’s domestic triangle.

As you would expect, however, Ferrari steps up a gear when it gets to the racing scenes and Mann really does put pedal to the metal when the story reaches the Mille Miglia. The cars look wonderful — and so does Italy; the landscapes and cities the cars hurtle past en route from Brescia to Rome and back are stunning. And the pace barely flags, although the race would be even more involving had we got to know the individual drivers better beforehand (Enzo enters five in the race). As it is, Gabriel Leone’s Alfonso De Portago, an aristocratic Spanish playboy with a Hollywood actress girlfriend (played by Sarah Gadon), is the only one to make a big impression. Even so, the racing in the film is genuinely exhilarating, and there is a crash scene that is truly breathtaking. On this occasion the overworked cliché is valid — when it occurs, there won’t be a viewer who doesn’t gasp.

Ferrari is released exclusively in movie theaters on Christmas Day, December 25 in the US and on December 26 in the UK.