Probably more mindblowing for an American audience that barely gets any exposure to this kind of material from its own industry. For my taste, Guadagnino plays it way too safe. I was waiting for it to push beyond the melodrama into something more wild or messed up, and I never really got that. He's constantly flexing with impressive camerawork, great editing and a fantastic score, but what is it all in service of? There's not a lot more to this than very basic melodrama. Tennis is used a metaphor for innuendo and relationships, which becomes a bit eye-rolling as the film goes along. On top of that it's not nearly as sexy as some people are suggesting, it feels like a lot of foreplay and innuendo without a real pay-off at any point. His camera doesn't shy away from nudity or sweat, and Trent Reznor's score puts in a lot of work in turning up the heat, but you want it to push beyond that at some point. For me it doesn't really develop into anything surprising and the conclusion it ultimately goes with feels kinda lame because of it. Still, it does a good job at intriguing you with the personal struggles of the three main characters, all of which are well portrayed by the actors. Zendaya is a bit hard to read at times, though it could be intentional with the character she's playing. There's enough merit to the complexity of the characters and technical aspects that kept me from being bored, but the entire time I kept thinking about how much more interesting this could be with someone like Paul Verhoeven at the helm.
6/10
Between 1983 and 1997, Jim Varney gave us the Ernest anthology of films. This series was seemingly resurrected by Martin Scorcese, in this unofficially subtitled addition "Ernest Tap Dances On My Last Nerve For 3 Hours".
Come on folks, this is a Scorcese film. The man who gives us endlessly rewatchable films like Goodfellas, Casino, Wolf of Wall Street. Fantastic pieces of work that will last forever.
This is not such a film.
It is bloated. Poorly paced. Starved of any real emotions for much of its duration. And when the end comes to finally put it out of its misery, it lacks any punch. Much to the chagrin of the director who casts himself in an overly-wrought cameo.
It isn't a catastrophe. De Niro puts in a great day's work, Di Caprio is consumed by the role. There are plenty of fine actors around them doing fine work. It's just a mess of edits and lacking focus.
I struggle to see a great film in this even if the fat was taken off it. It just isn't a masterpiece in hiding. And that's sad because the bones of the story itself is well worth telling.
They say every great fighter has one great fight left in him. I wonder if we have seen that already from Scorcese and this is one fight too many...
Boring characters, boring script, boring story, full of inaccuracies and over-the-top dramatizations. Very little that is shown on screen happened in real life.
We see way too little of Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari. Basically, they each had a scene and that's it. Leo Beebe took way too much screentime. Also, too many pointless scenes with Miles' son or with Shelby and Miles arguing bloated up the runtime of the movie.
In reality, Henry Ford II didn't need to be persuaded to enter motorsports. He always wanted to have a Ford run the Le Mans. We never see how the first car was designed and built in England. It's not even mentioned that the first three versions were based on a Lola Mk6, probably the most innovative car of its time. Only the MkIV that won the 1967 Le Mans was designed and built in America.
Caroll Shelby wasn't part of the team from the beginning, he was brought in after the disappointing debut season of 1964.
The Ferrari 330 P3 was not as competitive as the Ford GT40 MkII. By nightfall, Bandini's Ferrari was at 12th place and the GT40 MkII's held comfortably the 1-2-3-4 positions.
During the final hours of the race, Miles & Hulme's car had a 4-lap lead on their teammates McLaren & Amon, but the #1 car had to pit one more time to switch out a wrong set of brake rotors which cost them most of their lead. Now, Miles gets the team order to back off so that he can finish neck-to-neck with McLaren (the 3rd car was 12 laps behind). Miles lets McLaren catch up but decides to slow down further right before the finish line in protest, thus allowing McLaren to win by more than a car's length.
In the end, it was a battle of attrition. Only 3 of the 13 Fords finished and only the two 275 GTΒs (and none of the 330 P3s) finished from the 14 Ferraris entered, while Porsche managed to finish all four 906 cars in positions 4-5-6-7.
And something that really bugged me: Miles' brakes overheated IN THE RAIN!! Fucking ridiculous. Not only is traction on the wet limited, so Miles wouldn't be able to brake as hard because his tires would be slipping, but the rain would also have cooled the brakes and not allow them to overheat to the point of glowing red-hot. I guess the director wanted the recurring theme of failing brakes for the last accident, which is not how it happened in real life. Miles' prototype J-car had some untested aerodynamics which caused his crash at the end of the long back-straight, and the aluminum honeycomb chassis proved too weak and shattered, bursting the car into flames, killing Miles.
You'd be better off watching Steve McQueen's Le Mans from 1971.
