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The opening of Michael Mann’s film about the Italian automobile entrepreneur tells you everything you’d need to know about how he sees Enzo Ferrari himself. It’s a moment that captures the last time Enzo Ferrari really was able to feel happy on the racetrack, but obviously that glory isn’t something that’d last forever. But knowing that Ferrari is a movie that Michael Mann has been trying to get made for a very long time, it’s easy enough to have your own expectations set to a very lofty standard. For better or worse, this might as well be the culmination of it all – though at the very end of the day, I’m glad that Michael Mann finally was able to get it made.  

Starring as the Italian automotive executive is Adam Driver, portraying Enzo Ferrari within the midst of a crisis. His son Dino has died at 24 years old, and his marriage to Laura (Penélope Cruz) is slowly deteriorating. Caught in an internalized struggle pertaining to his own business interests, the acknowledgement of second mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley) and his second son, together with a desire to chase the glory that he once was known for, Michael Mann isn’t opting for the traditional biopic as much as he is a breakdown of a godlike complex that’s formed within Ferrari’s mind, supposedly at the top of the automotive industry.

Perhaps what’s most telling about Ferrari is the fact that Michael Mann’s writer, Troy Kennedy Martin, had died in 2009. That’s one among many signs that Ferrari is a movie that’s been in the works for a very long time, but I think that there’s a sign that the way the film was written feels like it’s from a different point in time. Nonetheless, Michael Mann makes the best out of the obviously aged material that he’s working with. In trying to deconstruct a figure much like Enzo Ferrari, he succeeds. What follows up from here is a horror film of sorts, all centered around the god complex that Enzo Ferrari views himself within.

All of this starts with how Michael Mann frames the racing scenes. They’re not glamorous in the same sense that watching the racing sequences from James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari were, but instead they feel almost horrifying. Something that’s always stood out in Mann’s films is knowing how moments like these sound, whether it’s gunfire in Heat or a phone call in The Insider, but they always have a ways of making every moment feel very tense. And because this is a movie all about Enzo Ferrari being far past his prime and looking out to chase that glory once more, what happens within these racing scenes is just the looming feeling of knowing that death is somewhere around the corner.

Despite the lack of Italian actors in its cast, Michael Mann also finds a means to make such people compelling in their own way. Adam Driver’s turn as Enzo Ferrari is not your traditional biopic performance, in that it never feels like a hagiographic recreation of the entrepreneur. Cruz and Woodley’s performances work to offer windows into Ferrari’s life and his interpersonal relationships, molding more dimensions for the internalized struggles of Ferrari. It might be a bit distracting to get past the fake Italian accents, but I think it’s clear where Michael Mann sees a point in addressing the mannerism by way capitalism consumes the soul, even to a point of making everyone feel almost alien from one another.

Not many filmmakers working around now have consistently made me as excited as Michael Mann has done so. With Ferrari evidently being a passion project for him, I think that it’s clear as day that this is a film he’s wanted to materialize for a long while. With the visual spectacle of it all not being remotely possible at the time of the film’s conception, perhaps it also results in what might be one of Mann’s best-looking works under his noted digital aesthetic. Perhaps I think this could have been a little bit more polished, given how far back its screenplay has dated itself back to, but I won’t lie when I say that I’m just glad to see that Michael Mann has finally made something he’s been meaning to for a while.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Neon.

Directed by Michael Mann
Screenplay by Troy Kennedy Martin, from the biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine by Brock Yates
Produced by Michael Mann, P. J. van Sandwijk, Marie Savare, John Lesher, Thomas Hayslip, John Friedberg, Andrea Iervolino, Monika Bacardi, Gareth West, Lars Sylvest, Thorsten Schumacher, Laura Rister
Starring Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey
Release Date: December 25, 2023
Running Time: 124 minutes