Every summer for the past few years, I’ve marathoned a director’s filmography. In 2024, it was Tony Scott; last year, Wes Anderson. This year, I went through all of the great Michael Mann’s films (in part as a gateway to finally settling in to watch the entire, original Miami Vice television series) — ironically, all three directors have at least one film or short that’s racing-related.
Mann is genuinely one of the coolest to ever sit in a director’s chair, and his motorsports film is actually his most recent endeavor. Ferrari was released in 2023, starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, and chronicles his marital issues, the lead-up to the 1957 Mille Miglia and the eventual fallout of a horrific crash that killed one of his drivers and nearly a dozen spectators.
I interviewed stunt coordinator Robert Nagle back in 2023 around the time this movie came out, but never reviewed the movie itself. Now, at the end of my Michael Mann marathon, it feels apt to do so.
For starters, Mann is one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors, particularly in the crime genre. He directed Heat, frequently considered among the best crime thrillers ever made; the three-hour saga stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro and features one of the greatest shootout scenes ever put to celluloid.
His other work includes Collateral (with Tom Cruise in a rare villain role), The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans, Thief and Manhunter (the latter of which is an adaptation of the prequel to Silence of the Lambs). His next film is Heat 2, which follows events years prior to, and also immediately following, the first movie. After The Jericho Mile and Ali, Ferrari was his third sports (or sports-adjacent) outing.
Mann’s early work features tons of blue-hued lighting and synth soundtracks, and many of his crime films focus on the relationship (and even mutual respect) between criminals and the law enforcement trying to put them behind bars — or in body bags. Mann also made a notable switch to digital filming midway through his career, starting with Ali but going full-bore in 2004 with Collateral (nighttime Los Angeles looks incredible on digital).
All of this leads to Ferrari, which is decidedly not a crime film but is shot on digital. Mann apparently started looking into an Enzo biopic around 2000, with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in talks to star as Ferrari at one time or another. Driver (appropriately enough, given the name) and Penelope Cruz eventually took on the roles of Enzo Ferrari and his wife Laura, respectively.
The supporting cast is rounded out by Shailene Woodley as Ferrari’s mistress, Gabriel Leone, who played Ayrton Senna in the recent Senna series, as driver Alfonso de Portago, and Sarah Gadon as actress (and de Portago’s girlfriend) Linda Christian. Also cast were Jack O’Connell, who has more recently received acclaim for his horror roles in Sinners and the 28 Years Later films, and Patrick Dempsey. Dempsey, of course, has more than 20 years of racing under his belt alongside his acting career, including starts in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Rolex 24 at Daytona.
While Ferrari is primarily rooted in focusing on Enzo’s personal life, the racing is interwoven with those moments to show just how central a focus it was for him. A multi-Grand Prix winner in the 1920s, Ferrari obviously went on to create one of the most iconic automotive (and motorsport) brands.
My favorite scene showing the intersection of Ferrari’s on-track and off-track lives comes early on, when Maserati is testing a car to beat Ferrari’s track record. Enzo and company are all at church, but they can hear the starter pistol blasts from the track close by; as the predicatore gives a sermon related to racing and engines, they keep checking their stopwatches, timing the laps with the sounds of the pistol. Once they come out of church, Enzo tells them they’ll re-take the track record that afternoon.
The following scenes then show, especially to audience members who might not be familiar with motorsports, the cost that can come with racing and pushing things to the brink. One of Enzo’s drivers is killed attempting a new fast lap, in a scene that I remember got some laughs from my theater audience (the car hits a curb and sends both driver and automobile flying through the air, in a way that could seem silly to those not acquainted with how dangerous early motorsports were).
Most of the discussion around Ferrari centers on a later scene in the Mille Miglia, a road endurance race that started in the 1920s. Partway during the final stage of the race, de Portago refuses to take tires in an attempt to cut down his time and win the race. His No. 531 blows a tire while running over a “cat’s eye” road marker, spins out, flips up into a telephone pole and then barrel-rolls over a crowd of spectators on the roadside, killing driver, navigator and nine others.
It’s a horrific scene — I’ve seen more than 1,800 movies in my life by my count and very little shocks me, but I went in knowing very little about the film’s story and it kind of stunned myself, a friend I was with and pretty much the entire theater. The friend who invited us last-minute to the late showing of the movie had already seen it once, and he told us he was expecting that kind of reaction.
Our auditorium’s dead silence afterward said it all; even now, it’s pretty gruesome and doesn’t shy away from showing the Ferrari barrel-rolling over the spectators, followed by a long pan across a number of mangled bodies, severed limbs and, eventually, de Portago’s body cut in half near the car.
Obviously, this is all true to life, and everything I’ve read of the actual accident scene sounds like they presented it pretty accurately. It also includes the small detail of Linda Christian kissing de Portago before he heads off on the final stage of the race; in any other movie, this would be a pretty normal scene between two people in a relationship. In this case, there’s another level: it’s a recreation of the iconic photo “The Kiss of Death” (Il Bacio della Morte), popularized by Life magazine after the fact, when Christian kissed de Portago before he drove off.
As for the racing scenes in general, I really, really enjoy them. The sweeping shots of the cars flying through the Italian countryside are incredible, and the on-board shots in both test sessions and the Mille Miglia are fantastic too. I love Ford v Ferrari, Rush and the like, both of which are better films, but there’s something about having these roaring machines winding through immense settings (rather than an established circuit) that adds a sense of grandeur to the stage.
The nighttime scenes feature some of Mann’s trademark photography, especially similar to what we see in Collateral, Heat or Thief; while there aren’t safes being broken into, guns being drawn or heists going on in Los Angeles, Ferrari has gorgeous shots of the cars’ headlights cutting through the dark and navigating these precarious roads with very low visibility. Mann loves his lights popping at night, which is on full display here.
As serious as a lot of Mann’s other films are, this has some small, funny moments. Enzo yells at someone driving a Ferrari in the rain with the top down; he scoots Linda Christian over during a photo op when she accidentally stands in front of the Ferrari logo; and has various back-and-forths with his drivers.
Penelope Cruz is easily the standout in Ferrari: she’s a powerhouse in this movie. Her performance has so many layers to it: tolerating Enzo’s infidelity but threatening his company if he oversteps further, mourning the loss of their son at a young age, and having to deal with the turmoil surrounding the Mille Miglia. The film also deals with Ferrari’s relationship with the media, which I thought was interesting to see in the context of 1950s racing.
Ferrari also scored a Top Ten Films nod from the National Board of Review for 2023, alongside films like Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese), Oppenheimer (Nolan), Barbie, Poor Things, The Iron Claw and The Holdovers. 2023 was a pretty great year, so to stand among those movies is pretty impressive.
In case anyone’s wondering where this ranks in Michael Mann’s filmography, this is how I divide up his movies:
- Perfect or nearly flawless (Heat, Manhunter, Thief, Collateral)
- Really, really good (The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans, Public Enemies, Ferrari)
- Flawed, but still solid (The Keep, Miami Vice, Ali, Blackhat)
- TV movies (The Jericho Mile, L.A. Takedown)
The great thing is that none of his movies are bad. It’s cool when you come across a filmmaker whose “worst” movies on their own list would still rank highly among anyone else’s projects. Think Quentin Tarantino, Kathryn Bigelow, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan or Wes Anderson.
Some of Mann’s movies that I’d rank lower, especially Ferrari and The Keep, make me wonder if more was left on the cutting-room floor. For the latter, there definitely was: his Gothic, period-piece World War II horror, about Nazis accidentally releasing an ancient evil from a Romanian fortress, originally ran three hours and was heavily cut down prior to release (though I still absolutely love the finished product). Ferrari feels like there should be some more racing scenes sprinkled throughout.
Ferrari is listed on Netflix, or available to rent via places like YouTube Movies and Amazon Prime Video. It’s definitely worth a watch, as is the rest of Michael Mann’s filmography.
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.
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