‘Ford v Ferrari’ revs into high gear at Toronto Film Fest

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TIFF pays tribute to Streep, Phoenix

As a big-budget original movie made largely with practical effects, “Ford v Ferrari” isn’t so much pointed against headwinds in Hollywood as it is speeding 200 miles-per-hour right into them.

The film, directed by James Mangold, premiered Monday at the Toronto International Film Festival, unveiling a big, swaggering throwback movie, a studio-made crowd-pleaser led by a pair of in-form movie stars in Christian Bale and Matt Damon.

“As the real stars of more and more movies become the IP – the source material, the costume, the uniform – the magic of the actors walking into something completely unknown to you is an exciting thing that we haven’t seen in a long time,” Mangold said in an interview in advance of the film’s premiere. “To make an intelligent action movie was the goal.”

“Ford v Ferrari” is just getting into gear. It won’t hit theaters until Nov 15, but it’s already drawn strong reviews and been drafted into this fall’s awards season after first debuting at the Telluride Film Festival last week. For Damon, such talk is too early, especially for a movie made with the intention of reaching a mass audience.

“I read the script and I thought it was a crowd-pleasing movie in all the right ways – like a movie that people would want to go see,” said Damon. “That’s what we made. It’s just a great underdog story.”

“Ford v Ferrari” dramatizes the Ford Motor Co’s drive to dethrone the reigning power of international racing, Ferrari, at the 1966 Les Mans, the classic 24-hour endurance race. Damon plays automotive designer Carroll Shelby; Bale plays the headstrong driver Ken Miles. It’s a movie about obsession and drive, in which Shelby and Miles are often chafing at the constricting corporate dictates of Ford.

Mangold sees his movie, also, as an effort to battle a dominant force.

“I definitely feel, at least inside my own body, that there’s an exhaustion with the kind of superhero-tentpole movie and all the tropes of them,” said Mangold. “Certainly ‘Logan’ was my response. I wasn’t just trying to make a Western disguised as a superhero movie. I was also trying to make an original superhero movie.”

Career

The 55-year-old Mangold (“Walk the Line”, “3:10 to Yuma”) has made a career out of directing a disappearing breed of movie: studio films aimed at adults. Before “Joker” was winning plaudits for rewriting the superhero film, Mangold’s gritty, unadorned take on Wolverine, “Logan”, became the first superhero film to earn an Oscar nomination for its writing.

“Ford v Ferrari”, costing close to $100 million to make, is a potentially risky project for 20th Century Fox, which after producing the film was acquired by the Walt Disney Co. After disappointing results for Fox’s initial releases under its new parent company (“Dark Phoenix”, ‘’Stuber”), “Ford v Ferrari” may turn the tide.

But as Shelby initially tells Ford’s Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal), “You can’t buy a win”. Yet you can, Shelby says, pay the right people to give you a shot at winning.

Also:

TORONTO: In a gala dinner held Monday amid the Toronto International Film Festival’s unspooling premieres, the festival paid tribute to Joaquin Phoenix, Meryl Streep, filmmaker Taika Waititi and cinematographer Roger Deakins.

With the city teaming with stars in town for the festival, TIFF this year added a star-studded fundraising dinner that coincided with some of its most anticipated premieres. Streep stopped by just as her financial industry satire “The Laundromat” was screening. Phoenix’s “Joker” was simultaneously making its North American debut just blocks away.

Phoenix, who rushed up to the stage before Willem Dafoe had finished his introduction to the actor, said he had intended just to “make a bunch of tasteless jokes at my expense.” But Phoenix said he was moved by the clip reel of his films that played before his speech.

“When I was 15 or 16 my brother River (Phoenix) came home from work and he had a VHS copy of a movie called ‘Raging Bull’ and he sat me down and made me watch it,” said Phoenix of his brother who died in 1993. (AP)

“And the next day he woke me up, and he made me watch it again. And he said, ‘You’re going to start acting again, this is what you’re going to do.’” (AP)

By Jake Coyle

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