Film
Le Mans ’66
- Director
- James Mangold
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 152 mins
Titled Ford v Ferrari in the US, which gives you a better idea of its subject matter, James Mangold‘s escape from the world of the X-Men isn’t just a film about chaps driving cars very quickly indeed. The background to the drama is Ford’s battle with Ferrari, which dominated the annual 24 hour Le Mans endurance race in the early 1960s.
Having failed to buy the company, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) instructs engineer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to beat the uppity Italians at their own game. Christian Bale plays maverick Brit WWII vet driver Ken Miles in a performance described memorably by The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw as “an actorly display: a spiky, gawky, angular and borderline-ridiculous collection of mannerisms, an accent that mixes Pete Postlethwaite with a bit of Noddy Holder”.
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