Le Mans '66 (aka Ford v Ferrari*1)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. James Mangold / Trailer
With November barely begun the awards-season hopefuls begin to rev their engines, each running down a checklist of inspiration, pathos and over-earnest hand-wringing. Attempting to get an early lead on the other contenders comes James Mangold’s racing-flick, Le Mans ’66.
Adapting the story of the Ford/Ferrari dispute which resulted in the former building the GT40 performance car, Christian Bale plays legendary driver Ken Miles*2, Matt Damon becomes auto-entrepeneur Caroll Shelby, and everyone else is shoved onto the sort of ancillary placeholder character shelf which blights this sort of movie and makes it more average.
GRIMLY Le Mans ’66 is good. It’s just also very average. It’s good at being that sort of grimly determined underdog story, not least because it has one foot firmly in recorded historical fact. Unfortunately that’s gone through the screenwriting process to become a trite, over-acted soap opera of a movie which also happens to have some of the greatest breath-holding race cinematography to hit our screens in recent memory. There’s just not enough of the latter. For a movie about a race that’s named after a race, there’s an awful lot of Le Mans ‘66 spent listening to characters explaining backroom politics and not showing a race.
And yet, the cliché on the surface masks an oddly counter-reverse-cynicism running throughout. By its final reel, this is a film about sticking it to The Man by continuing to work for The Man. It’s about the great American success story being achieved for those who don’t deserve it, by the ones who couldn’t otherwise have done it without their help. About teamwork ultimately resulting in failure when the boss has his name-badge on the glory anyway. About the intuitive racer going against their pathological need to win because the CEO of a corporation told them that would look better. All of these conflicts make the film more interesting than this type of thing usually is. And yet none of these conflicts are resolved as the credits roll, perhaps leaving a bitter taste for anyone who hasn’t come to watch the film just for All The Cars*3.
IN ARMSLY With sharper scripting, this could have been an interesting companion-piece for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood - the colour palette and production design are certainly there. Would it have hurt Mangold to get a few Rick Dalton movie posters up in the background? Come on, man! Although I accept that having Clint Booth hanging around the track to pick up stunt-driving tips would probably have been too distracting for something that's meant to be A True Story, after all.
But in the moments where it counts, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael captures the racing beautifully. The camera isn’t locked off above the cars and it’s only momentarily at driver-level; the rest of the experience is delivered somewhere around the top-rim of the wheel, visibly shaking with raw speed and adrenaline. More of this and less yakking would have been a good thing.
Ultimately, Le Mans ’66 is a two-and-a-half hour tribute to the podracing sequence in The Phantom Menace, if Anakin Skywalker had come from Sutton Coldfield and verbalised his entire inner monologue. And I’m absolutely fine with that.
If you thought Rush had 'too much edge', James Mangold is your friend.
For the good bits, yes.
It is.
Let's be fair, it's not.
We will.
There isn't.
Level 2: JJ Feild is in this, and he was in that first Captain America film along with Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Richard 'Tonra' Armitage.
*1 First point of contention before we even sit down. The movie is called Le Mans '66 in the UK "and other territories", one would imagine because it's about the 24 Hours Of Le Mans race in 1966. And that's fine. Meanwhile in the US it's called Ford v Ferrari, a title which is also technically accurate but feels like it's been applied with considerably less flair. Now, re-titling movies for international markets is by no means a new thing, and obviously the marketing teams know best (it's their job after all), but given the amount of metaphorical flag-waving on display in Mangold's movie, and our transatlantic cousins' previously noted distaste for our Gallic chums, what exactly are 20th Century Fox trying to say about their target American audience here?
No need answer, the question is metaphorical as well. [ BACK ]
*2 With, it's notable to add, a sort of weird Brummie accent which sounds like Dick Van Dyke has set up shop in Wolverhampton. Now, as someone who a) knows nothing about racing history, b) watches a lot of movies and c) gets easily bugged by accents, the first thing I did when returning home was to look up where Ken Miles originated. And lo and behold, he was born in Sutton Coldfield, just north of Birmingham. Fair enough then, I don't need to raise that in my review. It appears that Christian Bale's research stopped at precisely the same point as my own however, as a fellow cinephile at work pointed out the next day that Mr Miles actually sounded... *checks notes* nothing fucking like Bale's interpretation in Le Mans '66. Whatever, it just seems like an odd choice, that's all, which not a single person on-set felt able to call Bale out over. Can you imagine if James Mangold had directed Logan in the same vein? Jackman pacing irritably around a dusty shack mumbling "Roight, I'm gawin't stab yow with these knoives in a minnit!".
Oh, and Ken Miles may have been a genius driver but if Le Mans '66 is anything to go by his sandwich-game was fucking atrocious. That wouldn't have happened in a Jon Favreau version of this movie. [ BACK ]
*3 Although over the previous two and half hours, I'd been under the impression I was watching a film about Christian Bale's Ken Miles. So if anyone can tell me why the final minute of Le Mans '66 is spent watching Matt Damon crying in his car like a potato that's sprung a leak as if that's supposed to mean anything, that'd be lovely. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Okay, I actually have plenty of notes and observations from watching Adam McKay's The Big Short, but it occurs to me that they're all largely redundant for one reason: it's pretty difficult to effectively critique a film that you didn't really understand. And please believe me, I'm not being cooly self-deprecating when I tell you that I went to watch a movie about the 2008 financial collapse*1, and came out knowing pretty much the same amount as when I went in. Which isn't that much. And it's not like the mechanics of the central conceit aren't explained to the audience, directly and on several occasions. The main problem with this movie was sitting in seat E5…
Y'see, for all its no-nonsense, straight-talking style, there's still a layer of smugness lightly draped over the whole thing, as you're assured by a character that it's supposed to be bafflingly complex while he metaphorically winks at you and whispers "…but you get it, right?". Even half the characters still didn't understand it by the end of the film, and they'd been party to the same information as the audience had. And they work in finance, so I had no chance. As (intentionally) erratic as the performances are, it felt a little like watching an episode of Hustle, but where you know how it's going to end, there's no 'reveal' and you can't bring yourself to like anyone.
And then at one point, Christian Bale's character is explaining that he's got a glass-eye while moving both of his eyes, so then I'm sat thinking 'is that even possible?' and a bit of Googling later tells me that in some cases where the surrounding muscles haven't been damaged, yes it is possible, but I had enough on my bloody plate without throwing that into the mix, as well. But I was able to instantly name the Metallica tracks he listened to, so that made me feel good about myself for a few, brief seconds. I imagine that was the point.
But yeah, The Big Short probably quite good, I guess?
Don't ask me, I wouldn't know.
The documentary-style camerawork and fast-cuts mean that you'll probably end up with a headache if you watch the film on a cinema-sized screen.
I HAVE NO IDEA.
Even accounting for my density, probably not.
I can't imagine so.
There isn't.
Level 2: The film features a brief appearance by Margot Robbie, who starred in About Time alongside Domhnall 'Hux' Gleeson.
*1 A collapse whose effects saw the company I worked for at the time effectively dissolve leaving me unemployed, so it's not like I have no interest in the subject.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Okay, there's two ways we can do this. Either you can go on and read the 511 words after this paragraph, or you can stop after the final word of this one: shite.
Still here? Oh, fair play. The thing that strikes you about Ridley Scott's Exodus (and fairly early on) is how bollocks it is. That's not to say it's complete bollocks, of course, since that would be implying that the film succeeds at something. No, it's just bollocks in that 'all-over-the-place like Joel Edgerton's accent' sort of a way. It's clear what the story's meant to be, and in all fairness you have to be pretty much on-board with that before the BBFC card appears, because the film's going to do little to change your mind. I wasn't on-board. By the time the credits rolled, I'd have happily thrown myself overboard just to end the white-noise of Uncle Owen chasing Batman and The Mandarin around the desert for two hours while the audience look on, thoroughly bemused.
Here's an actual, genuine excerpt of the screenplay:
* * * * * Exterior: Day. Moses and the 400,000 Israelites trudge across the desert. A MESSENGER gallops to the head of the line.
MESSENGER: Ramses rides after us, Moses, with four thousand men and a thousand horses!
MOSES: How far behind..?
MESSENGER: Four days; less, if they don't rest the horses!
CUT TO ~
Exterior: Night. RAMSES and his horde ride over the desert.
GENERAL: Sire, we must rest the horses! RAMSES: NO!!!
* * * * *
…even the frequently-ghosting addition of a third dimension can't add an extra layer of depth to this screenplay, and in socio-political terms, it's the Phantom Menace of Biblical epics*1, with pseudo-political gossip, tittle-tattle and backstabbing interspersing the scenes of outlandish action like a kind of Old Testament soap-opera. On a logistical level, the key story-points of the film make Darren Aronofsky's Noah look like a wildlife documentary, although I'll admit that it's to the film's credit that it doesn't try to rationalise them. In fact, the 'parting of the sea' finale was looking quite understated until Scott turned it into an eye-popping 3D Guinness advert (ironically, for a film which might have worked better if I'd had a drink in my hand).
If there's one thing Prometheus taught us, it's that Ridley Scott directs symbolism and suggestion as if they're fact. By the time Grumpy Moses sees God as a petulant 8yr old, and begins to bicker with Him as such, your backside will be getting as numb as your brain. Two and a half hours is long for a fantasy film, and it's long for a mythical/political statement. When the film can't work out which it wants to be, it's even longer. Choose one, Ridley, choose one.
A grand vision which seems to have been lost half-way back down the mountain, Exodus: Gods And Kings is an unholy mess of a sermon...
Oh, more or less.
Not at all.
I have no idea.
*shrugs*.
Not really, but you'll have one hell of a job convincing me why it's great.
Nope.
There is, indeed. This is no consolation.
Why do they keep calling Moses 'Mosher'?
His hair isn't that long…*2
*1 And I say that as someone who loves The Phantom Menace, as well you know.
*2 No, that's a joke. Let me get some kind of enjoyment out of the film.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
So, Batman, Lois Lane, Hawkeye, Mystique and Rocket Racoon all walk into a mobster's attorney's office… stop me if you've heard it, yeah? David O.Russell's latest movie packs a solid cast into two and a half hours of lying, scheming, conniving and more side-boob than the M*il Online's sidebar puts out in an entire hour*1. The players have been hired to bring their A-Game, and bring it they do, but the film never quite reaches the heights you feel it's capable of. The soundtrack and wardrobe should be pointing toward a feelgood groove of Anchorman levels, especially in the first act where we're meeting the characters at the top of their game, but director Russell doesn't let us forget for a second that there's trouble ahead. Unfortunately when that trouble arrives, we don't really care enough for any of the shifty chancers to feel its full impact.
There are some truly fantastic moments in American Hustle, bringing greed, trust, anger and humour into the mix, but they don't really gel together to make a great story; it's more a collection of great scenes. Not knowing how much of the depicted action is 'true'*2, the plot seems to be a scattergun affair, always entertaining but needlessly complex (or if not complex then over-detailed and under-explained). The problem (for me) is that it's sort of like a mashup between The Godfather and an episode of Hustle, both of which I love, but both of which are structured more… well, coherently. In keeping with the format of the BBC con-man series, there's a reveal sequence at the climax of the film, but it feels rushed and nowhere near as satisfying as it should (for reasons which are too spoilery to go into in this review). Russell does a lovely job of making the audience feel as uneasy as the characters, the more they get out of their depth, but they payoff seems nowhere near as outlandish as the events which brought everyone there. I suspect this is where the 'true-story' aspect has its limitations, and that there's a far more exciting movie to be made with the same cast.
But fair play to casting director Mary Vernieu for finally putting Robert De Niro back onscreen as a genuinely threatening presence; it's a relief to see that he has still got it. Enough of this grumpy-old-man rom-com shit, already.
Not quite everything it could (or should) be, American Hustle is worth the price of admission just to see a great cast give some fine performances. There's just the nagging feeling that it's all for nought; too exaggerated to be real, not enough fun to be fiction.
The film's not as slick as the trailer.
Mostly.
For me, not quite.
As fun as the film is, you may get more out of it watching at home.
No.
I will.
There isn't.
Amy Adams' Brit-voice is meant to be all over the shop, right? Like it's an audible metaphor for the con, or something? Because if not, it just seems like she couldn't hold an accent if she had two 15" catcher's mitts, coated in superglue…
*1 Sarcasm aside, it's a little worrying that cinematographer Linus Sandgren spends so much time looking at Amy Adams' boobs, whereas the rest of us would get a restraining order.
*2 A title card at the beginning of the film tells us "Some of these events actually happened", and while that's fine, I'm getting a bit hacked off with the amount of true-story cinema lately. If I want true, I'll watch the news, thanks. And yes, I'm very aware that this trend isn't over yet. The next two movies I'll be watching are fact-based, albeit each with a sufficiently noteworthy basis. Wow. How's that for reverse film-snobbery? Look, just give me some fucking superheroes, alright?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Gotham. Sunlight gleams on the upper floors of skyscrapers, casting a golden glow around the rooftops, and reflecting down to the streets below. It's the end of the afternoon, or early evening at latest, and the Stock Exchange is still open, the city's financiers are hard at work, trading shares to make a profit for their respective companies, and raise the profile of Gotham as a whole. Inside, as two traders exchange speculative smalltalk while getting their shoes polished, a motorcycle courier enters and is buzzed through the security barrier. A supervisor tells him he has to remove his helmet for security reasons. The courier complies. Hell erupts now.
After disposing of the security staff, the masked mercenary known as Bane walks onto the main trading floor, his armed support team already in place. In a hail of gunfire he gains the attention of everyone that hadn't already noticed something was amiss. Bane approaches a young, terrified, but petulantly defiant trader. "This is a stock exchange!", he spurts, "There's no money here for you to steal!". The mercenary is unperturbed "Oh? Then why are you people here?" he retorts before slamming the yuppie into a console and using his credentials to open the computer. This is when the real work takes place. Bane's hacking team gain hardwired access to the trading program, and place several high-risk transactions in Bruce Wayne's name, using his stolen thumb-print as verification. The investments they make are almost guaranteed to fail, bankrupting Wayne and placing his company into crisis, whereby Wayne Enterprises board member John Daggett can use one of his other companies to subsume Wayne Ent and use the company for his own ends. "How long will the uploads take?", Bane asks his technologically adept henchman. "Eight minutes..." he confirms, and sets the automated program in place. We see a timer on the otherwise nondescript TFT screen, and a percentage indicator slowly increases above it.
Outside, the sunlight has disappeared and rain is beginning to fall on the now-grey streets. Alarms inside the Stock Exchange have alerted the police, who are arriving in their droves. Whether this is a robbery or a hostage situation is in dispute, and Deputy Commissioner Foley decides the best course of action in the interim is to cut the cabling to the building's cell-tower while they await contact with the criminals. Back on the trading floor, this move has let Bane's team know they have company outside. "Looks like they've taken out the wire", the lead-hacker reports. Bane takes this in. "Then it's time to go mobile!" he informs them. The upload is switched to wireless, and the raiders prepare to exit the building.
At the main entrance in the grey early evening, the assembled GCPD points its guns toward the doors, where a commotion is beginning to form inside. The doors swing open, and traders and staff members begin to swarm out on to the street, with Foley's call to his men to hold fire. Suddenly from behind the doors, three motorcyclists burst through the crowd still exiting the building, each with a hostage / human-shield riding pillion. The lead biker is Bane, following is his hacker associate, and another member of his team, all riding in the same general direction, but hoping to pull a police pursuit in different directions if the need arises. The police have begun to erect roadblock-ramps, thinking the criminals would be escaping in one four-wheeled vehicle, but the bikes clear these easily, and they're hastily lowered so that a chasedown can begin.
As predicted, the police have no knowledge of which biker takes priority, and they attempt to catch all three, although they're fairly sure the one in the lead is Bane. Racing through the undercity, we see the hacker take his tablet computer out of his bag to check on the upload; he still needs more time. We cut to the interior of a pursuing police car, as the officers inside notice the surrounding streetlights dip out and they're momentaily plunged into darkness, the result of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse device. A thundering growl approaches them from behind, and a vehicle with two massive wheels roars out of the night... the BatMan has returned. For the first time in eight years, Gotham's dark knight races through the rain-wet streets on the Batpod, chasing an adversary that only he stands a chance of catching. His brings his first target off his bike, leaving him for the police to arrest, and sets after his second - the hacker carrying the tablet that's in the process of bankrupting Bruce Wayne. Batman dismounts the rider, and pulls the computer out of his backpack in time to see the upload complete. Time has run out and the transactions have been made. Nothing more can be done from here, and the only option for Batman is to flee the police.
Bane has escaped both pursuers, and the Deputy Commissioner's priorities change, now. Ever the career-cop, and with the recent revelation that Commissioner Gordon will soon be put out to pasture by the mayor, he decides that the armed robbers aren't as great a priority as usurping Gordon's position by achieving what he failed to do: apprehend Batman. All units are diverted into chasing the vigilante through Gotham's streets, and Batman is finally cornered in the dead-end of an unlit side street. The police wait at the junction, knowing that their quarry is trapped, and that one way or another he'll have to emerge from the darkness.
As Foley is about to address Batman over a loudhailer, an engine starts up, and two piercing blue headlights stab out of night. Headlights that are too high off the ground to be the bike they chased in there...
Now, there are several things that bug me from this particular set-piece.
• The notion that a group of elite hackers can only access the stock exchange computers from inside the building, in this day and age, is comical. The entire point of the trading system is that people don't have to be in the same room, and even if a hardwired connection was needed (which is wasn't, they went wireless), they could have surreptitiously entered the system with far greater ease, even out-of-hours if they'd falsified times as well.
• It's ridiculous to believe that any trading performed from that room during the time of an armed raid would be allowed to stand. The later assertation that 'it'll take time to prove fraud' is a complete falsehood as all the raiders were unmasked, and there will be no evidence of Bruce Wayne on the premises other than a convenient thumbprint on the only item that requires it.
• How did Bane and his goons get the three bikes inside the building? He walks in from the street at the start of the scene, and his minions are already in place in there. Unless he has other people to bring bikes into reception areas constantly following him around?
• How can the standard motorcycle helmet we see Bane wearing fit over his face-mask? They're not exactly designed to leave a lot of wiggle-room, and it doesn't look especially bulky or unusual.
But I can brush those aside if I have to. They don't make any sense from the surface, but they're easy to skim over. No, what really boils my piss is this: How come Gotham goes from broad daylight to pitch-black night in eight minutes? The race against time is a recurring theme, literally and metaphorically, in the Nolan Batmanverse, and they make a point of giving visual and verbal indicators that eight minutes is the timescale, here. Fuck it, less than eight minutes. The timer's already on its way when Bane's bikers leave the Stock Exchange in daylight, and when Batman joins in it's dark. Everywhere. Dark. What the actual fuck? In order for night to fall that quickly, the Earth would have to be cube-shaped.
And it's no better later on in the film when Batman and Catwoman have their final talk before trying to stop the bomb*. They're talking in darkness when he tells her that they have a 45-minute window before detonation, and the next thing you know, it's daylight. Broad daylight.
It's not that big a deal though, really. Not worth, say, writing over 1300 words for, or anything...
*Don't even get me started on a bomb which is described as "becoming gradually more unstable", yet the uranium breakdown can somehow be timed to the very second with a clock on the side. A device that's been degrading to explosion-point for four months, yet 10 minutes before it's due to go off, can be thrown around in a 40-ft container as the truck makes a 20-ft drop onto concrete with no adverse effects. A nuclear device with a 6-mile blast radius that can fly to the horizon (ie 3 miles) and detonate without still taking out Gotham, or causing a tidal-wave that would take out Gotham. Actually, the bomb might annoy me more than the day/night thing, but that would make more sense, so I can't have it as my Major Beef™.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
