Having read a couple positive reviews of this film, I have to say I was very disappointed.
The very first issue I noticed is that a lot of the English dialogue was clearly translated directly from Italian either by google translate or someone who doesn't have a great command of the former language. There are a lot of turns of phrase in here that are commonly used in Italian but sound unnatural in English. Speaking of Italian, could the actor who plays Ennio be more of a mumbler?
Following from that, the script and screenplay in general are not good. The only character the film makes an effort to bring to life is Cesare - the others are quite flat. Characterization is wildly inconsistent as well - Cesare seems to be a cool, analytical type until out of seemingly nowhere he tosses his proverbial cookies all over Walter, who himself is never more than a cardboard cutout. Walter is both tired of competing and extremely competitive - we never find out what's motivating him and throughout he just comes across as milquetoast. Ronal Gumpert, the Audi team boss, is introduced as a rival to Cesare early in the movie, and then never really shows up again after Cesare plays his trick at the Monte Carlo Rally.
Plotwise it actually started off reasonably well. One sees the difference between the (somewhat stereotyped) German and Italian styles, Cesare plays stereotypically Italian meta-mind games with Audi, Lancia somewhat amusingly bluffs their way through the FIA's homologation check. Then for some reason there's an awkward and overlong jazz montage at a hotel, and from there onward it just falls off the rails. A bunch of new characters are introduced who never really do anything to further the plot or introduce tension. Ronal Gumpert doesn't do anything but grimace and bark a couple words in German after Monte Carlo, which is a shame since Daniel Bruhl gave the best performance IMO in the early part of the film. There was what seemed an attempt to introduce some romantic tension between Cesare and the female doctor that really fell flat. One of the secondary Lancia drivers crashes and goes to the hospital, but we don't really know him and it's clearly just a vehicle to bring Walter back into the fold after the painfully contrived bust-up between him and Cesare prior to the race. After Monte Carlo the actual on-track races themselves are not really part of the plot, aside from the aforementioned contrived crash scene. The film ends in another overlong montage of nods and grins set to piano music.
The soundtrack became more and more grating and disjointed as the film went on, and there were so many montages, it started to feel a bit like watching a high school media class project. The editing overall was not good.
That there might be at least a little unambiguous positivity in this review, I can find it in me to praise the costumes, those were good and looked pretty authentically 80s to this millennial. The photography was, on the whole, underwhelming - they manage to photograph these absurdly powerful cars in such a way that they usually look like they're going at about 15 kph.
It's a shame that these filmmakers couldn't make a better story out of one of the more compelling stories in motor racing history. It's sad to see how far Italian filmmaking has fallen in general - we went from Fellini and Risi to cringe virtue signaling like "C'è ancora domani" and a deluge of mediocre romcoms.
This film gets the very basics of good storytelling wrong. It introduces the main conflict at the beginning of the film, drops it halfway through, and in its place tries to introduce a bunch of contrived underdeveloped interpersonal subplots that don't really affect the main plot. The script writers should have stuck to Italian, clearly the one language of which they had a solid command. Ultimately not a well-spent hour and 48 minutes.
The very first issue I noticed is that a lot of the English dialogue was clearly translated directly from Italian either by google translate or someone who doesn't have a great command of the former language. There are a lot of turns of phrase in here that are commonly used in Italian but sound unnatural in English. Speaking of Italian, could the actor who plays Ennio be more of a mumbler?
Following from that, the script and screenplay in general are not good. The only character the film makes an effort to bring to life is Cesare - the others are quite flat. Characterization is wildly inconsistent as well - Cesare seems to be a cool, analytical type until out of seemingly nowhere he tosses his proverbial cookies all over Walter, who himself is never more than a cardboard cutout. Walter is both tired of competing and extremely competitive - we never find out what's motivating him and throughout he just comes across as milquetoast. Ronal Gumpert, the Audi team boss, is introduced as a rival to Cesare early in the movie, and then never really shows up again after Cesare plays his trick at the Monte Carlo Rally.
Plotwise it actually started off reasonably well. One sees the difference between the (somewhat stereotyped) German and Italian styles, Cesare plays stereotypically Italian meta-mind games with Audi, Lancia somewhat amusingly bluffs their way through the FIA's homologation check. Then for some reason there's an awkward and overlong jazz montage at a hotel, and from there onward it just falls off the rails. A bunch of new characters are introduced who never really do anything to further the plot or introduce tension. Ronal Gumpert doesn't do anything but grimace and bark a couple words in German after Monte Carlo, which is a shame since Daniel Bruhl gave the best performance IMO in the early part of the film. There was what seemed an attempt to introduce some romantic tension between Cesare and the female doctor that really fell flat. One of the secondary Lancia drivers crashes and goes to the hospital, but we don't really know him and it's clearly just a vehicle to bring Walter back into the fold after the painfully contrived bust-up between him and Cesare prior to the race. After Monte Carlo the actual on-track races themselves are not really part of the plot, aside from the aforementioned contrived crash scene. The film ends in another overlong montage of nods and grins set to piano music.
The soundtrack became more and more grating and disjointed as the film went on, and there were so many montages, it started to feel a bit like watching a high school media class project. The editing overall was not good.
That there might be at least a little unambiguous positivity in this review, I can find it in me to praise the costumes, those were good and looked pretty authentically 80s to this millennial. The photography was, on the whole, underwhelming - they manage to photograph these absurdly powerful cars in such a way that they usually look like they're going at about 15 kph.
It's a shame that these filmmakers couldn't make a better story out of one of the more compelling stories in motor racing history. It's sad to see how far Italian filmmaking has fallen in general - we went from Fellini and Risi to cringe virtue signaling like "C'è ancora domani" and a deluge of mediocre romcoms.
This film gets the very basics of good storytelling wrong. It introduces the main conflict at the beginning of the film, drops it halfway through, and in its place tries to introduce a bunch of contrived underdeveloped interpersonal subplots that don't really affect the main plot. The script writers should have stuck to Italian, clearly the one language of which they had a solid command. Ultimately not a well-spent hour and 48 minutes.