Tag: Ford GT

Movie Review: The 24 Hour War

Gresh’s review of Ford versus Ferrari had my attention, and SWMBO wanted to see the movie, so off to the theatre we went.  My take on it was pretty much identical to Joe’s:  Grand entertainment, lots of grimaces and Hollywood liberties with the facts, but overall, an entertaining if not entirely accurate flick.

Later that evening, we were channel surfing and we flopped over to Netflix, and what do you know, a documentary titled The 24 Hour War popped up.  I know Amazon, Facebook, and others use all kinds of spyware to figure out what to pitch to us next, but wow, this was amazing.  That very day, and a pop up for another movie about the great Ford versus Ferrari war and Le Mans.  Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound, so we watched The 24 Hour War.

Unlike Ford v. Ferrari, The 24 Hour War took no liberties with the truth, the facts, the timelines, or the vehicles themselves.  It was a damn fine bit of actual, factual reporting, and I enjoyed it more than the movie we had seen earlier that day.  If you get Netflix, it’s free, and if you own a microwave and a refrigerator, you won’t have to pay $15 for popcorn and a couple of Cokes (like Gresh did).

A few more good things about The 24 Hour War:  It went into much more detail about Henry Ford and Enzo Ferrari (I found that interesting), and portions of the show were narrated by A.J. Baime.  Mr. Baime does a series on interesting cars people still drive in The Wall Street Journal and I love his writing.   I’m just finishing up a book by Baime about our industrial mobilization prior to and during World War II, and it, too, focuses heavily on the Ford family.   The guy is a great writer, and I’ll have a review here on Baime’s book, The Arsenal of Democracy, in the near future.

One more thing regarding the cars themselves:  To me, it’s not really a contest and I don’t much care who won Le Mans.   Given the choice between owning a Ford GT or a Ferrari, to me the answer is obvious:   It’s Ferrari all day long.

But I digress.  Back to the review.  The bottom line?  Ford versus Ferrari was an entertaining movie, but the The 24 Hour War is an absolutely outstanding documentary.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

ExNotes Review: Ford vs Ferrari

Caution: Spoilers ahead!

When did two sodas and a bag of popcorn top 15 dollars? I mean, come on dude!  I’m not a big movie-goer because it seems like everything is either superhero stuff or some depressing Nazi thing.  Anyway, us gasoline burner types are starved for content when it comes to full-length movies. We get nothing on the big screen but engine sounds mismatched to the motorcycles and grease monkey stereotypes. When something like Ford vs Ferrari comes along we tend to fall all over ourselves praising the damn thing.  And it’s not a bad movie.  People are clamoring for Oscar nominations.  I don’t know, man, it makes us look kinda thirsty.

Matt Damon does a good job playing Carroll Shelby, although my wife says you never forget it’s Matt Damon as Jason Bourne playing Carroll Shelby. I didn’t recognize any of the other actors so I could accept that they were who they were. There were a few unpleasant characters planted by Hollywood to give the story a villain.

One Ford executive was made out to be petty and vindictive. I have no idea if he was that way in real life. Lee Iacocca was an eager sort, the company man trying to make stuff happen between the stuffy corporate world and Shelby’s hot rod culture. Henry Ford II was shown as cold and authoritarian, much like you would expect him to be. The Ferrari driver had a Simon Legree, comic-villain look that brought me back to the movie theater every time he glared at the hero Ken Miles.

Ferrari was a foil for Ford in this movie. We really don’t get to see much of them. After the Le Mans race begins Ford II flies off to dinner in a helicopter while Mr. Ferrari stays in his seat to watch. I guess that was to show the different level of commitment to the sport. It seems like old man Ferrari never slept the entire 24 hours of Le mans.

One of the movie’s main story arcs was how Ken Miles was forced off the team for Ford’s first attempt at Le Mans. That bad-guy Ford executive is to blame. Of course real life is less complex and Ken Miles ran that 1965 event breaking down after 45 laps due to a bad transmission. Little things like that make you suspect the rest of the story.

Ken Miles’ character was a sort of rebel against the car sellers. The Suits irritated him to no end. I know we are supposed to cheer for him but he seemed like a pain in the ass to me. I’ve known guys like that: Bitching about the company while drawing a check. I figure that if Ford is paying you stacks of money to represent them, suck it up, you know? At least fake it, man.

Some of the Le Mans race scenes were pretty hokey looking, like something out of the old CHIPs television show. “Ponch, we got a freeze up!” Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed Ford vs Ferrari. I think you’ll probably enjoy it also. You shouldn’t watch a Hollywood movie expecting to get the facts (see Cinderella Man’s portrayal of Max Baer) and us gasoline burners don’t get many chances to hear the audio match the engines.