LE MANS '66 (2019) FILM REVIEW

***

12A, 152 Mins

Crunchy car drama is less racy off the track.

I'd be fibbing if I were to say I know or frankly care about anything to do with cars or racing which perhaps set myself up for falling out of touch with James Mangold's crunchy, but empty 'Le Mans '66' (2019) which lacks the petrol to propel it beyond its undeniably spectacular circuit laps.

Building on the hot n' cold chemistries of 'Senna' (2011), 'Rush' (2013) and 'Borg vs. McEnroe' (2017), this has an art vs. commercial partnership at its centre between the hot-headed impulses of Christian Bale's "Brummie" driver Ken Miles and the cool, corporate calculations of Matt Damon's American automative designer Carol Shelby. They team up to "build a car to beat Ferrrrari...with a Ford" at the 1966 24 hours at Le Mans and the film is certainly at its raciest when grinding gears on the track.

Through a combination of scraping tires skidding on concrete and "vroomtastic" volumes of churning engines, Director Mangold bone-crunchingly choreographes the chaos against Rolling Stone-inflected guitars. There's a melodiousness to the action which brings back jukebox memories of the musical madness that made Edgar Wright's 'Baby Driver' (2017) such a fantastically immersive experience. Where the 'Fast and Furious' films have fast cars achieving impossible stunts without a smidgen of physical heft, however, this puts audiences directly in the driver's seats and throttles them around with ultra-realistic life and death stakes that naturally come with Formula 1-style racing.

An IMAX viewing is a must, but I only wish some of the off-track drama was as exciting. Like 'The Aeronauts' (2019), the key to this film succeeding or not comes down to whether it has beef as well as bang for your buck. Something which 'Le Mans '66' only has the latter of. 

A sense of plodding procedure clouds the lengthy company meeting scenes that feel distracting and, dare I say, "boring" when contrasted with the glitz and glamour of the fast lane. Car manufacturing is, again, a subject I know nothing about so perhaps wasn't tailored to my tastes, but a great work of commercial cinema is able to transcend distinctly uncinematic material and make it accessible to a mainstream audience. 

As mentioned, the film's core hot n' cold duo has been done to death in the movies and pulling it off requires an original edge to its execution. Matt Damon is surprisingly understated as Shelby, but Christian Bale cuts himself an off-date slice of ham in a role which's cartoony Birmingham dialect spins half dozen geographical laps of the UK. I never once believed I was watching anything more than a caricature of a motoring icon which is hard to believe coming from an actor prized for his methodical ability to bodily transform into a part.

​Bale's overwrought performance sums up the puncture that prevents this film from speeding to the finish line. For all its petrolheaded panache, it all runs like a formulaic vehicle manufactured solely for Academy award consideration.

​10/10 for the cars, 7 for the drama...