Ford VS Ferrari. (Steve McQueen, good movie, Detroit, acting)
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I loved the movie, but I have to wonder ... why didn't Matt Damon ever don the traditional Carroll Shelby overalls that we always saw him in??? Huge Shelby fan here ... in fact, my youngest son's middle name is Shelby!
Just watched Shelby American on Netflix and the only time it showed him in overalls is when he raced, other then that he wore a suit.
Just saw the movie last night and found it pretty disappointing. It was "Hollywooded" way too much. Rather than focusing on the actual development of the cars, and on more of what happened at Shelby America, they made the show just about the exaggerated interpersonal relationships between the Ford execs and Shelby. They really didn't explain what the Cobra was all about, anything about it's development or just how significant it was. They never mentioned that while Shelby America was working with the GT-40 project in the GTP class, they also built their own Shelby Daytona (Cobra based) for the GT class-and won it. They never showed the actual design and building of the GT-40, it just showed up at Shelby for additional development. It was never mentioned that the first ones were built by Lotus.
The race scenes were mostly dumb (fun, but dumb). Just because you "let your driver loose" doesn't mean that his car is 30 miles an hour faster than anything else on the track. And why are they always downshifting when increasing speed? The whole show felt more like Days of Thunder (IIRC-the old Nascar film with Tom Cruise) than a story about Shelby America.
There is a Netflix documentary out on Shelby right now that actually is better than the movie.
It is definitely not a movie for racing fans. I think Rush is way better, although the racing scenes are equally bad.
Great film powered by gasoline, adrenaline, testosterone and excellent acting. While this is obviously a male centric film, the excellent performances of Caitronia Balfe as Ken Miles (Christian Bale) wife, Mollie, and Noah Jupe as Ken's son Peter, brings much needed emotional counterbalance to the film. I don't know why the Academy overlooked Caitronia Balfe's performance other than "it's just a racing movie". Well, it's much more than that and I'm so happy I was able to see it on the big screen.
I finally saw this movie and as a lifelong motor racing fan, I was somewhat disappointed. It is definitely a somewhat hokey Hollywood movie intended for a general audience.
The racing sequences are unrealistic. Things such as drivers talking to each other while side by side on the straights were ridiculous. (When they finally got to Le Mans, because they were in enclosed cars, they just stared at each other.)
Some of the scenes in the pits at Le Mans were laughable.
An alternate movie title might have been “Ford (the bureaucratic behemoth) v Shelby.” I wondered, after watching the movie, could Ford really have been as obstructionist as portrayed? After doing a little research I decided, definitely not.
Here is what Ford through their racing division actually did:
They went to England and hired Eric Broadly of Lola to design and build the first cars. (They were not designed by Shelby.) He based them on his design for the Lola Mk6 GT: https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/ima...ry-83394_1.jpg
They did all of the wind tunnel work and engine development, including extensive durability testing on sophisticated dynamometer equipment.
They set up a small but well-funded subsidiary, Kar-Kraft, to develop many parts such as transmissions and other mechanical parts, continue the design of the car, assemble it, and do many other things. Kar-Kraft adapted the final engine choice, the big stock car based engine, to the chassis.
They gave cars to Shelby AND Holman-Moody AND Allan-Mann Racing (England) for on-track testing and development. Holman-Moody, of stock car fame, was barely mentioned in the movie and Allan Mann never was. The quick-change brake disks (they showed it as an entire suspension change in the movie) were a Holman-Moody development. Ford coordinated the best efforts of these three so the resulting cars built by Kar-Kraft and given to the teams were the same. All three teams raced them.
It doesn't seem that Ford hindered the effort in any way. They coordinated the whole thing. They were the ones who made it happen.
Finally saw this tonight and really enjoyed it. Christian Bale did a fantastic job with acting for this role. I learned after watching the movie; all of the driving scenes were real ---no CGI. The only CGI used was to create an audience at the race. Some of those scenes were intense. Especially the race that lasted 24 hrs.
Just a really good story.
Last edited by Wintergirl80; 06-21-2020 at 05:55 AM..
I finally saw this movie and as a lifelong motor racing fan, I was somewhat disappointed. It is definitely a somewhat hokey Hollywood movie intended for a general audience.
The racing sequences are unrealistic. Things such as drivers talking to each other while side by side on the straights were ridiculous. (When they finally got to Le Mans, because they were in enclosed cars, they just stared at each other.)
Some of the scenes in the pits at Le Mans were laughable.
An alternate movie title might have been “Ford (the bureaucratic behemoth) v Shelby.” I wondered, after watching the movie, could Ford really have been as obstructionist as portrayed? After doing a little research I decided, definitely not.
Here is what Ford through their racing division actually did:
They went to England and hired Eric Broadly of Lola to design and build the first cars. (They were not designed by Shelby.) He based them on his design for the Lola Mk6 GT: https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/ima...ry-83394_1.jpg
They did all of the wind tunnel work and engine development, including extensive durability testing on sophisticated dynamometer equipment.
They set up a small but well-funded subsidiary, Kar-Kraft, to develop many parts such as transmissions and other mechanical parts, continue the design of the car, assemble it, and do many other things. Kar-Kraft adapted the final engine choice, the big stock car based engine, to the chassis.
They gave cars to Shelby AND Holman-Moody AND Allan-Mann Racing (England) for on-track testing and development. Holman-Moody, of stock car fame, was barely mentioned in the movie and Allan Mann never was. The quick-change brake disks (they showed it as an entire suspension change in the movie) were a Holman-Moody development. Ford coordinated the best efforts of these three so the resulting cars built by Kar-Kraft and given to the teams were the same. All three teams raced them.
It doesn't seem that Ford hindered the effort in any way. They coordinated the whole thing. They were the ones who made it happen.
I am a car nut and hated the movie. I found it barely watchable.
The film was well done, but was obviously produced for a mass-market audience, so the racing, true story, and authenticity were all bastardized and dumbed down for mass market appeal. The thing is, it was completely un-necessary. The true story is compelling and dramatic enough that it would have been fine as is, without massively fictionalizing it and leaving out half the true story.
The movie had great production value, but is a stinker for a true car nut.
Given that this was a "racing" movie, there was almost a complete darth of racing in it.
I gave it 2-stars out of 5. 1 for production value and 1 for cohesiveness/watchability. "LeMans" it is not that is for sure.
I was not disappointed, because once I learned they cast Matt Damon as Carrol Shelby, I knew the movie had a very slim chance to be a good movie. Damon is a great actor, but he is completely miscast as the iconic racing engineer Shelby. Horrible casting choice.
We watched it on HBO last night. It was very entertaining. Yes movies are rarely 100% accurate about technical features. We saw the documentary about Shelby so we were covered on the factual stuff.
As they say, its only a movie.
We just watched it, too. I figured there would be complaints about it not being authentic in different ways. That's always the case with the "based on a true story" type of movies. Also, I wouldn't have watched it if not for so many good reviews of it here on CD.
Anyway, I really liked it. It was sort of formula (pardon the pun), but I don't really think there was a way to get around that because of the type of story it is. I thought it was interesting learning about how they go about building and testing the cars, the mechanics and skill of actually racing them, and the racing scenes themselves were pretty exciting. I gave it a 4/5.
Spoiler
The scene where Shelby takes Ford for a ride is hilarious.
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